Male and Female Pueblo Dancers [R]

From San Ildefonso Pueblo, Awa Tsireh was many things to his pueblo; he was a farmer, pottery painter, museum employee, painter and silversmith. He was born in 1898 and died in 1955.

Awa Tsireh was painting before 1917. He was the oldest of the early group of pueblo painters. His formal education had not extended beyond primary grades. He was versatile in his styles of painting. He was equally comfortable with representational or semi-realistic, representational plus conventional, and abstract.

This painting is a good representation of his “representational style,” in which he usually painted pueblo religious or ceremonial scenes—in this case two dancers. There is no background scenery nor is there any hint of a ground plane. The two dancers are alone on the paper.