Buffalo by Abel Sanchez Oqwa Pi [SOLD]

MASTERPIECES OF PRIMITIVE AMERICAN ART is a series of silkscreen prints by famous Santa Fe artist Louie H. Ewing.  Shortly during and after World War II, the Laboratory of Anthropology, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, retained famous Santa Fe silkscreen artist Louie Ewing to execute prints of masterpieces of local art.  These silkscreen prints were made in an edition of 500 copies exclusively for members of the Laboratory of Anthropology.  They were not released for sale.  This screen print is one of six images in the first set.

This silkscreen print is of a buffalo by San Ildefonso Pueblo artist Abel Sanchez Oqwa Pi.   It was issued in a portfolio cover on which is a description by Margretta Stewart Dietrich, as follows:

“Even among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, who are farmers rather than hunters, the buffalo was of supreme importance and by tradition is so to this day.  Old men in the upper Rio Grande pueblos still repeat the stories, told them by their fathers, of the yearly buffalo hunts.  Every autumn, parties left the Pueblo villages for the great Plains, not to return until Christmas.  A day in advance of the homecoming, a runner reached the pueblo to tell the women to prepare the celebration.  An old man of the village kept count of the days of absence by making marks on a viga (house beam).

“Each man of the hunting-party had his particular duty; only designated hunters might kill the great beasts, while the skinners cared for the valuable hides and others saw to the drying of the meat to bring home.  Rubbing the faces of the horses with the blood of a slain animal was believed to make them unafraid of the smell of the buffalo.  Only bows and arrows or spears, never guns, were used by the Pueblos in buffalo hunting.

“Oqwa Pi, better known by his White friends as Abel Sanchez, is a San Ildefonso Indian and at one time was Governor of the pueblo.  He has never had any art instruction; he paints for pleasure but supports his family by farming.  No doubt he has heard descriptions of buffalo all his life, but it is probable that he had never seen one alive.”

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from a family in Santa Fe