Original Painting of Diné Travelers by Navajo Nation Artist Beatien Yazz [SOLD]

C4466C-paint.jpg

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Beatien Yazz, Navajo Nation Painter
  • Category: Paintings
  • Origin: Diné of the Navajo Nation
  • Medium: casein
  • Size:
    17-½” x 29" image;
    23-¾” x 35-¼” framed
  • Item # C4466C
  • SOLD

This large original watercolor painting was created by Diné of the Navajo Nation artist Beatien Yazz.  It is another fine example of Yazz’s exceptional technical abilities.  The painting features a large group of Diné travelers making their way across a snow-covered desert.  Five people, four horses, and two dogs appear here, with each figure receiving the careful attention to detail for which Yazz is well known.  With this painting, Yazz manages to make a challenging setting into something we’re happy to explore.

Waves of brown and tan tones cross the image horizontally, blending in with one another and creating the remarkably rich sky that covers about three quarters of the image.  Down below, white and cream tones are blended together similarly, creating the snowy desert ground.  A fierce wind is at these travelers’ backs, bending tree branches in the direction of their destination and whipping tiny clouds of snow up from the ground. The colorful blankets with which the travelers protect themselves from the cold provide small doses of bright color in an image that is otherwise focused on mood and atmosphere.

Artist Signature of Beatien Yazz, Navajo Nation PainterThe painting is signed B. Yazz and dated ‘84 in lower right.  It is framed under glare-resistant acrylic and cream-colored matting with a marbled texture in a thin metal frame.

Beatien Yazz (1928-2012) Little No Shirt (Jimmy Toddy) was a painter who was born in 1928 on the Navajo Reservation.  At an early age, Yazz met Bill and Sallie Lippincott, traders at Wide Ruins Trading Post. They recognized Yazz’s talent and made available to him scraps of paper and other equipment so that he might practice his artwork.  Alberta Hannum’s book Spin a Silver Dollar tells the story of the Lippincotts and the young Navajo boy they encouraged. The book was illustrated by the boy himself—Beatien Yazz. He served in the U.S. Marines in World War II and was a member of the famed Navajo Code Talkers. Following the war, he returned to the reservation and began to paint in earnest. He specialized in subjects familiar to him in his daily life on the reservation. He has been eminently popular with collectors since the 1950s.


Condition: excellent condition

Provenance this Original Painting of Diné Travelers by Navajo Nation Artist Beatien Yazz is from the large collection of an Albuquerque family

Recommended Reading: YAZZ Navajo Painter by Wagner and Brody

Relative Links: Navajo ReservationSpin a Silver DollarPaint the WindpaintingsBeatien Yazz, Navajo Nation Painter

Close up view of a section of this painting.

Beatien Yazz, Navajo Nation Painter
  • Category: Paintings
  • Origin: Diné of the Navajo Nation
  • Medium: casein
  • Size:
    17-½” x 29" image;
    23-¾” x 35-¼” framed
  • Item # C4466C
  • SOLD

C4466C-paint.jpgC4466C-large.jpg Click on image to view larger.