Untitled Koosa Banner Carrier and Drummer [SOLD]

Tonita Vigil Peña (1893-1949) Quah Ah, during her lifetime, used a variety of signatures on her paintings.  It is through these signature changes that it is possible to date her paintings with reasonable accuracy.  This painting is signed Quah Ah Tonita Peña and with a pottery-design cartouche.  This is a signature she used in 1921 and 1922.

Peña was born at San Ildefonso Pueblo, but was sent by her father, following the death of her mother, to live with an aunt at Cochiti Pueblo at the age of 12. She spent the remainder of her life there.  She was and is still considered an artist from San Ildefonso Pueblo.

Peña was the only female in the group of talented early pueblo artists referred to as The San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Julian Martinez, Alfonso Roybal, Abel Sanchez, Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnacion Peña.  The men accepted her as an equal.

By the time she was 25 years old, she was a successful easel artist, and her work was being shown in museum exhibitions and in commercial art galleries in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She painted what she knew best—scenes of life at the pueblo—mostly ceremonial dances and everyday events. She is still considered one of the best female Indian artists of all time and is recognized as the very first female Pueblo artist to pursue art as a career. 

Like her peers, she never used a ground plane or perspective but managed to give the illusion of depth by avoiding, whenever possible, straight lines of figures.  In her dance groups, her individual figures give the appearance of being alive and moving rather than being fixed in time or motionless as other artists of her time painted.   

Peña’s paintings are distinguished by their spiritual integrity and vitality as only a Native artist familiar with ceremonial dances could produce.  Her paintings of dance scenes are delicate, yet strong.  The drummer in this painting has a strong face and ethnographically correct clothing.

The painting is framed in a handmade carved dark brown wood frame by the famous framer Tres Mowka Design of Santa Fe. 

Condition: appears to be in original condition but has not been examined out of the frame.   There is no question that it was framed using all acid-free materials as Tres Mowka Design did the framing. 

Provenance: from the collection of a Santa Fe family 

Recommended Reading: Tonita Peña by Samuel L. Gray