Early-Career Painting of Pueblo Dancer and Clown by Helen Hardin [SOLD]

This original painting was created by influential Santa Clara Pueblo artist Helen Hardin.  Collectors with knowledge of the artist’s work will recognize immediately that this is a rare and unique image.  Hardin was known for creating works in a wonderful style of her own invention, which often combined stylish variations of ancestral images with remarkable abstract fields of color.  This piece draws from the style and subject matter of traditional Pueblo paintings but adds a welcome element of humor.  While we cannot say with certainty, we suggest that it might be an early-career work. 

Hardin’s pueblo dance scene features two participants.  On the left, a man dances, holding a tall flag with feathers and a foxtail.  On the right, a clown interferes, holding a spear with a pair of bloomers attached.  They make eye contact with one another.  The dancer looks somewhat distressed while the clown, satisfied by his successful distraction of the dancer, smiles and laughs.  With no background or additional element of any kind, this is as close to traditional as we’ve seen from Hardin.  The figures themselves are quite reminiscent of those that were created by the artist’s mother, Pablita Velarde.  Perhaps Hardin intended to pay tribute to her mother’s work with this remarkably unique image.

The painting is signed Tsa Sah Wee Eh in the lower right with her hallmark of a little spruce tree.  It is framed in a carved wood frame under an off-white mat with a maroon interior band.

Helen Hardin (1943-1984) Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh or “Little Standing Spruce” was an innovative and influential painter from New Mexico’s Santa Clara Pueblo.  Hardin was born in 1943 to Santa Clara Pueblo painter Pablita Velarde and Caucasian civil servant Herbert Hardin. Inspired by her mother, she began creating and selling paintings as a teenager.  She went in a different direction than her mother and her mother’s peers, creating more contemporary works that depict Native American symbology with striking geometrical patterns and abstract imagery. She died of cancer in 1984, leaving behind her an astounding body of work for her many admirers to enjoy.

Condition: excellent condition

Provenance: this Early-Career Painting of Pueblo Dancer and Clown by Helen Hardin is from the large collection of a Santa Fe resident

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

Relative Links: Santa Clara Pueblo, Pablita Velarde, Native American Prints, Native American Paintings, Helen Hardin, Santa Clara Pueblo Painter