Basket Dancers

As Awa Tsireh's paintings developed over the 1920s, his figures became increasingly stylized. Many have round sightless eyes, flat limbs, and featureless bodies shown frontally but supported by legs and feet in profile that have art deco and Egyptian revival overtones. Less descriptive than his early dance paintings, the later watercolors met with great popular success among artists and collectors who valued their modernist appearance.

The paintings of Awa Tsireh (1898-1955), who was also known by his Spanish name, Alfonso Roybal, represent an encounter between the art traditions of native Pueblo peoples in the southwestern United States and the American modernist art style begun in New York in the early twentieth century. The son of distinguished potters, Awa Tsireh translated geometic pottery designs into stylized watercolors that feature the ceremonial dancers and practices of Pueblo communities. But Awa Tsireh's work is more than an amalgam of traditional and modernist design. At a time when the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs attempted to restrict Pueblo cultural and religious practices, the watercolors of Awa Tsireh and other Pueblo artists helped to affirm the importance of ceremonial dance and tirual to cultural survival.

Awa Tsireh's paintings quickly found an audience among the artists, writers, and archaeologists who descended on Santa Fe in great numbers in the late 1910s and 1920s. Painter John Sloan and poet Alice Corbin Henderson took a particular interest and arranged for his watercolors to be exhibited in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Henderson shared with the young Pueblo painter books on European and American modernism and Japanese woodblock prints, as well as South Asian miniatures and ancient Egyptian art that provided soure material for his stylized paintings. In this way, he redefined contemporary Pueblo art and created a new, pan-Pueblo style.

The paintings in this exhibition were donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1979 by the Hendersons' daughter, Alice H. Rossin.

For decades, scholars attributed Awa Tsireh's use of blank backgrounds to time he spent painting Pueblo pottery when he was younger and his interest in modern elements that would make his work relevant in the art market. But according to recent scholarship, Tsireh avoided portraying esoteric aspects of Pueblo rituals, like ceremonial settings and specific objects, to safeguard sacred meaning. Secrecy around important cultural knowledge is important to Pueblo people. This knowledge is best conveyed orally to those who are trained to use it and not through recordings like drawings or photography, which can easily circulate in a wider context. Tsireh's art upholds Pueblo values and ultimately helped safeguard cultural knowledge from indiscriminate circulation.

Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, 2023

Por varias décadas, los expertos le atribuyeron la manera en que Awa Tsireh usaba los fondos sin color a los años que había dedicado a pintar cerámica Pueblo cuando era más joven y a su interés por los elementos modernos, que contribuyeron a la pertinencia de su obra en el mercado del arte. Pero, según estudios más recientes, Tsireh evitó describir aspectos esotéricos de los rituales Pueblo, como los entornos ceremoniales y ciertos objetos, para proteger el significado sagrado. El secreto en torno al conocimiento cultural fundamental es importante para la gente Pueblo. Este conocimiento se transmite mejor de manera oral a quienes están capacitados para usarlo y no a través de registros como dibujos o fotografías, que pueden circular fácilmente en un contexto más amplio. El arte de Tsireh defiende los valores Pueblo y, en última instancia, contribuyó a salvaguardar el conocimiento cultural de la divulgación incontrolada.

Más de un oeste: Visiones artísticas de una idea estadounidense, 2023