Special Exhibit: One Hundred Years of Pottery and Paintings from San Ildefonso Pueblo

A very special exhibit: One Hundred Years of Pottery and Paintings from San Ildefonso Pueblo.  This is an exhibit of paintings mostly from students who attended the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1930s and pottery from known and unknown potters from the days of Polychrome pottery and into the most contemporary with pottery by Russell Sanchez. 

We have chosen artists of San Ildefonso Pueblo for this exhibit because it was there that the original painters emerged—Julian Martinez (Pocano), Richard Martinez (Opa Mu Nu), Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pi), Luis Gonzales (Wo-Peen), Tonita Peña (Quah Ah), Romando Vigil (Tse Ye Mu) and others—as a result of the innovative approach of the pueblo school teacher in the 1920s who supplied her students with paper and paints.  No other pueblo was as advanced.  It was also at San Ildefonso that the revival in pottery production was started by Maria and Julian Martinez in the 1920s, an event that would have a major impact on pueblo pottery for the next 100 years.

It is to these mostly self-taught artists of the early days of San Ildefonso history that we owe our gratitude and respect for their creative endeavors. 

Click here to view the Special Exhbit now: One Hundred Years of Pottery and Paintings from San Ildefonso Pueblo