“Eagle Dance” by a Student at The Studio [SOLD]

Surprisingly, this is the first painting by Manuel Trujillo (1927 -) Peen Tsa we have had in the gallery.  This one was painted while he was a student at the Santa Fe Indian School.  It bears the stamp of The Studio U. S. Indian School Santa Fe, NM on the back.  It is dated October 6, 1941 on verso and signed and dated 1943 on the lower right front.

“Manuel Trujillo . . . is represented in the collections of the Museum of New Mexico.  Born in San Juan in 1927, he graduated from the Santa Fe Indian School in 1947, after serving in the U. S. Army for several years.  He has exhibited at Philbrook (where he won an award in 1954), at Gallup, and in special Indian exhibits in New York and Arizona.” Tanner 1973

The Eagle Dancers are presented in The Studio style, that is, no ground plane or background materials, not even sky.  The Studio fostered that style of painting with its students.  Trujillo was 16 at the time he painted this.  He obviously was quite talented with an artist brush and paints.  His faces are handsome and the body proportions well executed.  The paints are strong and consistent in application. 

Condition: recently framed with archival materials.

Provenance:  from a resident of California who inherited her mother’s extensive collection of Native American paintings.

Reference:  Southwest Indian Painting: a changing art by Clara Lee Tanner, 1973