Multiple Modernisms

Twentieth-Century Artistic Modernisms in Global Perspective

oe Herrera (Cochiti Pueblo) Untitled (1951), oil/canvas 16" x 20" Collection of Jonson Gallery University of New Mexico Art Museum

oe Herrera (Cochiti Pueblo)
Untitled (1951), oil/canvas 16″ x 20″
Collection of Jonson Gallery
University of New Mexico Art Museum

My current research project, Generations: Modern Pueblo Painting, focuses on artistic families in the American Southwest beginning circa 1915. Modern in this context means “secular” art (non-ceremonial paintings whose subject matter is usually ceremonial) that embodies both indigenous intentionality and strategies for negotiating with the dominant culture. I am studying the work of several distinguished families, especially Tonita Peña (San Ildefonso-Cochiti) and her son, Joe H. Herrera, who transformed Native painting at mid-century by synthesizing indigenous pictorial traditions with Cubism and Art Deco. My method combines biography, connoisseurship, and historiography to produce an “Indian-centered” cultural history of Southwestern modernism.