Special Value Offer: Original Acrylic Painting “Mimbres Man and His Shadow” [SOLD]

Special Value Offer: The estate has authorized a 37% price reduction from $4750 to $2995.

Helen Hardin (1943-1984) Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh - Little Standing Spruce was from Santa Clara Pueblo.  From the very beginning of her career, was at the cutting edge of Indian-influenced art. Her art, though obviously drawing on her Indian heritage and tradition, was very much in the mainstream of modern aesthetics.

This painting of Hardin's is truly a work of exceptional drafting skills and superlative technical rendering. Quite extraordinary and striking, as the work of Hardin tends to be, it displays a true sense of the complexities and intricacies involved in the creation of such a piece.

The Mimbres Man and his Shadow, at first look, yields the image of the Mimbres in the foreground and his dark shadow in the back. Yet upon a closer look, one can see that to the left of the Mimbres there appears another shadow, if it can be called a shadow, because this image of the Mimbres is lighter than the background color. The end result is a Mimbres in the middle of the frame with his dark shadow behind him on his right and his light shadow behind him on his left and what appears to be a mountainous divide cutting through the middle of both shadows.

The painting is signed in lower right Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh and with the small spruce tree.  It is not dated.

Condition:  There are two small areas of paint abrasion, almost indistinguishable. The first area is just to the right of the face at eye-level and the second is at the cane right of the hand.  Neither is clearly visible with the naked eye but can be seen using magnification.

Provenance: from the estate of a client in Colorado

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