Description:
Watercolor on Paper. Signed l.r.: Awa Tsireh, Stamped u.r.: PLANCHE 55.
From: American Indian Painters, Vol. 2, p. 8: Awa Tsireh of San Ildefonso is a nephew of Crescencio Martinez, who was the first of the modern artists of San Ildefonso. He almost gave up art when his copies of Kiva frescoes angered the San Ildefonso people and he was severely punished. Helped and encouraged by white artists of Santa Fe, he acquired great success and became more famous than many other equally good Indian artists. His paintings have been exhibited all over the United States and abroad and are included in all discriminating Indian collections. Awa Tsireh's work has gone through three distinct periods showing three distinct styles. He began with a realistic manner. His subjects were then the ceremonial dances of his people. His figures were in pairs or groups, often arranged in serried rows or in circles. They were fairly small and very accurate. In some of them an effect of stateliness is achieved through the repetition of the same figure in the same movement. In the second period the artist is increasingly interested in decoration and symbolism. His figures are more stylized. He attempts a sort of conventionalized landscape and a combination of figures with purely decorative motives. To this period belongs, for instance, a magnificent and jolly work in which three Koshari are seen romping all over the arch of a stylized rainbow. Later Awa Tsireh shows his deepening concern with the spiritual world; his creative imagination enters the metaphysical field. He paints strange, haunting figures bordering on the supernatural and, somehow, reminiscent of the pottery designs of prehistoric Mimbres. Awa Tsireh is a very introspective person who speaks little and who can sit motionless as if asleep through a whole Indian dance performance. After the performance, without a moment's hesitation, he can paint this dance -- or rather the essence of this dance -- as distilled through his contemplative mind. "Harvest Festival" composes very nicely in a circle. It is somewhat sombre in color. Awa Tsireh has almost ceased producing. (Collection, University of Oklahoma) Map references: San Ildefonso Pueblo (N.M.)