Description:
Watercolor on paper. Signed l.r.: Ciu-tah '39, Stamped u.r.: PLANCHE 47.
From: American Indian Painters, Vol. 2, pp. 6-7: Vincente Mirabal was a promising young artist whose career was blasted by the war. He was born in Taos in 1918. After studying at the Indian School in Santa Fe, he became a teacher there and remained until he went into service. He had won a poster contest in San Francisco, and a painting of his was reproduced in the Christian Science Monitor, Boston, but he had not had time to produce very much. A member of the Third Army, he went overseas in 1944. He took part in the Battle of the Bulge and was killed in action in April, 1945 in Germany. Mourning him are his young Navajo wife, three sons, and a host of friends. In dress and action the "Taos Buffalo Dancers" simulate a herd of buffaloes, wearing as headdress a buffalo mask and horse, with hoofs on their feet. It is a pantomime. The Buffalo Dance belonged properly to the Plains Indians. The Pueblos of Taos, near the Plains, who sometimes hunted buffalo, were the first to adopt this dance. The other Pueblos have adopted it since; they all dance it and paint it. The color of this painting is a primitive and earthy as the soil itself. (Collection, University of Oklahoma)