Special Value Offer: Original Acrylic Painting of a Katsina Figure [SOLD]

Special Value Offer: the consignor has agreed to reduce the retail price of this painting from $24,000 to $15,000.

So many young Native artists shed the traditions in art fostered by their parents and grandparents and let their individual talents emerge into new and innovative art.  Allan Houser, Fritz Scholder, Popovi Da, Tony Da, Russell Sanchez, Joseph Lonewolf, Helen Hardin and many others were among the first to do so.  Helen Hardin, maybe not the first, but certainly one of the earliest pueblo artists to depart from traditional two-dimensional painting of the style fostered at The Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School, developed her unique painting style early in her career.

Hardin struggled early in her life about her identity and her future. She did not want to become an artist and compete with her famous mother. She was half Native American and half White. From her mother's side, she was Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo and from her father's side she was mixed European stock. Her mother had left the pueblo when she married a non-Indian and raised her children in Albuquerque.

When Hardin did express herself as an artist, she had difficulty with her heritage. She eventually accepted her social life to be Anglo and her artistic life to be Pueblo. That never changed. Her art was based on pueblo social and religious life as she remembered it growing up and being exposed to pueblo culture. Her style was far from other pueblo artists featuring similar paintings. She was presenting the traditional in a contemporary manner.

Hardin's paintings, even though based on pueblo religious art, are accepted by mainstream collectors, who may know nothing about pueblo religion or its significance, because of their striking beauty. One need not understand their meaning to appreciate their appeal. Early in her career, her paintings sold as fast as she could produce them. Their appeal has not diminished today.

This painting of a pueblo katsina is a striking example of her use of complicated geometric designs folded into an overall artistic presentation.  The robe is a consolidation of triangles of varying sizes, styles and colors that result in a beautiful expression.  The rainbow of colors in the feather headdress is amazingly well balanced in presentation.   Hardin had such a unique talent for design and use of color. This painting ranks high in desirability among her works. It is one of the finest of any we have had in the gallery.   

Condition:  the painting is in original excellent condition and is beautifully framed in the artists' traditional framing style.   It is signed in lower right.

Provenance:  from the Phillips estate of Colorado

Recommended Reading:  Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin by Jay Scott