Scenes in Gouache: Flatstyle Painting from the Santa Fe Indian School

When Dorothy Dunn established The Studio in 1932, the fine-arts program at the Santa Fe Indian School, she helped to coalesce local and national movements to formulate a painting genre and foster an international market for Indian painting. Although she directed the program for only five years, The Studio continued until 1962. 

"Dunn assumed that an innate artistic ability resided in each of her students; therefore, her method stressed encouraging the student's own natural ability rather than her 'teachings' about art. Specifically, Dunn believed she could not teach Indian painting because her students, as Indian people, inherently knew more about it. It was her role to reveal to her students their own intrinsic knowledge and understanding of this indigenous art-form. The students, to their credit, always painted from their own experiences, producing authentic portraits of their lives." 

-excerpts from Modern by Tradition: Dorothy Dunn & the Studio Style by Bruce Bernstein (1995 Museum of New Mexico Press)