Tsihnahjinnie Painting of the Navajo Fire Dance [SOLD]

Dorothy Dunn spoke highly of Andrew Van Tsihnahjinnie.  She thought he displayed “incisive interpretation, spontaneity of brushwork, originality of color, vigor of draftsmanship and vitality of action and that he had no equals among the artists of the Santa Fe Indian School studio and perhaps few superiors among modern painters.”  She thought he might well be “one of America’s top-ranking painters. In the brief seasons when he felt freed to paint the things he knew so deeply, without troubled concern for doing otherwise, his work attained a trenchant beauty, unique in modern art.”  Dunn 1963

Every attribute stated by Dunn is evident in this painting of the unique Navajo Fire Dance.  This is undoubtedly one of the finest paintings executed by him and it probably was painted early in his career.  The vigor of the dancers and expressions on their faces illustrate the awareness of each dancer of the one behind him who is swathing his back with fire. 

In the late 1800s, Dr. Washington Matthews observed the Navajo Fire Dance and described how each dancer bathed his fellow dancer with fire.  "When the fascicles were all lighted the whole band began a wild race around the fire.  At first they kept close together and spat upon one another some substance of supposed medicinal virtue.  Soon they scattered and ran apparently without concert, the rapid racing causing the brands to throw out long brilliant streamers of flames over the hands and arms of the dancers.  Then they proceeded to apply the brands to their own nude bodies and to the bodies of their comrades in front of them, no man ever once turning around; at times the dancer struck his victim vigorous blows with his flaming wand; again he seized the flame as if it were a sponge, and, keeping close to the one pursued, rubbed the back of the latter for several moments, as if he were bathing him.  In the meantime the sufferer would perhaps catch up with someone in front of him and in turn bathe him in flame.” Lipps

Few Navajo painters have captured the intensity and activity of the Fire Dance as shown in this painting by Tsihnahjinnie.  It is obvious that he was witness to the dance and was able to describe it so well in art form.

Condition:  appears to be in original condition

References: 

A Little History of the Navajos by Oscar Lipps

American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plains Areas by Dorothy Dunn

Provenance: from an estate collection in New York