Adobe Gallery Blog

Helen Hardin (1943-1984) Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh, Little Standing Spruce, Santa Clara Pueblo, was perhaps one of the most fascinating, complex, and engaging figures in the American Indian art world in the twentieth century. Her art was one of definitive struggle; to capture, hold, and relish those aspects of her native heritage yet depart from the Santa Fe/Dorothy Dunn School of her predecessors, including her mother Pablita Velarde.

Hardin's style, so distinctive and compelling, began to emerge in the 1970s with a series of Katsina figure paintings. These and later works are immensely complex works of such depth, energy, and gorgeous, compelling surfaces. Her personal explorations led her into the deeply affective works of the Woman Series, such as "Changing Woman." Her work is concerned with the intellectual and physical struggle of her very existence, the struggle of woman versus man, patron versus artist, Indian versus Anglo, tradition versus progression, an art of complexity and timeless beauty, a forward looking art yet rooted firmly in the ancient past.

A truly intriguing woman and indeed one of the preeminent American Indian painters of the twentieth century, lost long before her time, dying of cancer in 1984.