Untitled Taos Pueblo Matachine Dancer by Juan Mirabal [SOLD]

Juan Mirabal, an artist from Taos Pueblo, was joined by two other Taos Pueblo artists, Albert Lujan and Albert Looking Elk, in painting in a realistic three-dimensional Euro-American style in the 1915 to 1920 period. Lujan and Looking Elk mostly painted scenes of Taos Pueblo buildings and surroundings and sold their art directly to tourists visiting the pueblo. Because they did not paint in the flat style other Natives were producing, their work was considered “not Indian.”

Mirabal differed from the other two painters in several respects. The most surprising thing he did was to depict ceremonial dances at the Pueblo. Before this time, no Taos Pueblo artist created such realistic pictures for a non-tribal audience. From the 1930s, Mirabal's work shows a decidedly Cubist influence, which was unique among Southwest Indian painters of the time.

He most likely learned about modernist painting from Marjorie Eaton, a painter of his own age who lived in Taos in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In addition to being well educated in European Modernism, Eaton was enamored of Mirabal. It is Mirabal's inherent design and color sense that make his paintings come alive.

This painting of a Taos Pueblo man dressed for the Matachine Dance, performed in the wintertime at most Northern New Mexico pueblos, is dated 1933 and signed lower right with the initials JWM. It is framed in a manner where the entire paper is exposed by floating the painting on a fabric background as well as surrounding it with a fabric mat. The heavily hand carved wood frame was made by Marjorie Eaton.

Condition: The painting appears to be in original excellent condition.

Provenance: From the estate of Marjorie Eaton.

ex. coll. California Indian painting collector

Biographical Source: AskART.