Hopi Man with Piki and Female Maiden [SOLD]

Kewanyama was born at Shungopavi Village, Second Mesa, on the Hopi Reservation on October 14, 1922. As an adult, he moved to Winslow, Arizona, where he made a career of carving Katsina dolls and painting images of Katsina dances. He also made jewelry in the Hopi silver overlay style. He served in the U. S. Navy during World War II.

Works by Kewanyama are in the Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation in New York; Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff;  Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe; and in the National Park Service, Department of Interior in Washington, DC.  Exhibits of his art have been featured at the Arizona State Museum of the University of Arizona in Tucson; Hastings College Art Center in Hastings, Nebraska; the Museum of the American Indian in New York; the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  These collections and exhibits of his work are testimony to his importance as an early Hopi artist.

This painting is an early work by Kewanyama as revealed by the stiffness of the subjects.  His early works tended to be more static than his later works.  There was little modeling, no ground plane, and the figures appear rather flat.   Despite these comments, it is recognized that his paintings of Hopi subjects reveal accurate ethnological details.

The painting is signed in lower right L.C. Kewanyama.  It is painted on cream colored paper.  The painting has been mounted with hinges so that the full paper is floated and visible.  All acid-free materials have been used.

Condition:  the painting is in original excellent condition with vivid colors still predominating.

Provenance: from the collection of Katherine H. Rust

Recommended Reading: Southwest Indian Painting a changing art by Clara Lee Tanner