Object Details
- Gallery Label
- Rainbow Paintings
- A rainbow enclosing one or more animals and embellished with abstract forms representing nature is a formal symbolic device distinctive to the paintings of Awa Tsireh. The rainbow marks the boundary between the terrestrial and extraterrestrial worlds, and is the messenger of the cloud, which brings life-giving rain to earth. Along the top of the rainbow two stepped shapes represent clouds; falling from the middle of the arch are the vertical lines of rain. Above the rainbow is the Zia, or sun symbol, which sends rays out in the four directions sacred to the Pueblo peoples. The Zia's abstracted face sugests that the sun is a living force of the natural world. It has become the official symbol of the state of New Mexico. The symbols in these paintings relate closely to the designs on traditional Pueblo pottery.
- In Black Mountain Lion and Black Fox, for example, the design on the side of the mountain line represents a storm cloud with lightning bolts. The fox's design is a "heart line," symbolizing the spirit of the animal by showing its breath moving from its mouth through its body. The stepped forms at the base of the arch suggest distant mesas and mountains.
- Exhibition Label
- 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.
- In the 1920s, Awa Tsireh experimented with compositions that combine animal figures and abstract designs. The semicircular form seen here represents a rainbow, which in Pueblo thought is the demarcation between terrestrial and extraterrestrial worlds. The thin black lines that descend from its center signify rain, and the stepped forms at its base, mountains. The circular form in the sky is the sun. While using symbols from Pueblo culture, Tsireh shows only enough to intrigue the uninitiated, while conveying deeper information and meaning to Pueblo people with the ritual knowledge necessary to understand the interrelated meaning of these symbols.
- Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, 2023
- En la década de 1920, Awa Tsireh experimentó con composiciones que combinan figuras de animales y diseños abstractos. La forma semicircular que vemos aquí representa un arcoíris, que en el pensamiento Pueblo es la demarcación entre el mundo terrestre y el extraterrestre. Las finas líneas negras que descienden desde su centro representan la lluvia, mientras que las formas escalonadas de su base, son las montañas. La forma circular que está en el cielo es el sol. Aunque utiliza símbolos de la cultura Pueblo, Tsireh muestra solo lo suficiente para intrigar a los no iniciados, al tiempo que transmite información y significado más profundos a la gente Pueblo dotada del conocimiento ritual necesario para entender el significado interrelacionado de estos símbolos.
- Más de un oeste: Visiones artísticas de una idea estadounidense, 2023
- Data Source
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Artist
- Awa Tsireh, born San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM 1898-died San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM ca. 1955
- Date
- ca. 1925-1930
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin
- Medium
- watercolor and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- sheet: 11 1/4 x 14 1/4 in. (28.5 x 36.2 cm)
- Type
- Painting
