Tony Pena

The only reference I have found for San Ildefonso Pueblo artist Tony Pena is a Laura Gilpin photograph of him wrapped in the Chief White Antelope blanket that was found on the body of Chief White Antelope after the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. The blanket resides at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.

The Gilpin photograph is published in full color on the cover of Quiet Triumph, Forty Years with the Indian Arts Fund, Santa Fe. The booklet was published by Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, in 1966, on the occasion of an exhibition of the collection of The Indian Arts Fund of the School for Advanced Research.

Pena is not listed in any of the standard reference books of Native American painters at my disposal. Antonio Peña, the husband of Juanita Peña, was a painter of her black-on-black pottery, and it is possible that this painting is by him as he signed his name as Tony on her pottery.

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