Santa Clara Pueblo Buffalo Dance [SOLD]

Teofilo Tafoya, also known as Teo, was a son of Severa Tafoya, a potter, who was a sister of Van Gutierrez of the famous husband and wife couple Lela and Van.  This is the very first painting of Tafoya’s that we have ever had in the gallery.  It was painted in 1947 when he was 32 years old.  I do not know if he continued painting as a career as his primary career was teaching painting. 

According to published information in Lester (1995), Teaching and painting serve the same purposes in Tafoya’s life.   They are a means of preserving his culture and its art.  His subject matter is Indian life and ceremonies.

He had several mural commissions—Santa Fe Indian School, Santa Clara Pueblo Day School, Julius Rosenwald Building (Chicago) and Maxwell Public School.  These alone must have consumed much of his non-teaching spare time. Additionally, he was an instructor at Santa Fe Indian School in 1947.  In the early 1950s he pursued his master’s degree at the University of New Mexico, after which he taught art at the Albuquerque Indian School. (Tanner, 1973).

This painting of a Santa Clara Pueblo Buffalo Dance was beautifully executed and displays well the artist’s talent as a painter and teacher.  It was executed in the traditional Santa Fe Indian School style where there is no ground plane and no other physical features except the Sun and rain clouds overhead.

The painting is signed PO-QUI ’47 T. Tafoya in lower right.  It is framed in a hand carved wood frame.