Special Value Offer: Original Painting of a San Ildefonso Black-on-black Plate [SOLD]

This painting was completed in 1981, the year before Tony sustained severe head injuries in a motorcycle accident that left him with a twenty-five-year memory loss, a partial disability, and a mental age of about seventeen, at a time when he was biologically forty-one years of age.  It could possibly be one of the last painting he made before the accident.

Tony Da is known for his amazing pottery creations but he first started his career as a painting artist.  He once said that paintings were his first love and pottery was a short part of his career.  After partially recovering from his motorcycle accident, Tony completed a few more paintings but never made any more pottery.

This painting is obviously a tribute to his grandparents in which he reproduced one of their famous Black-on-black plates with the Mimbres feather design.  Why he presented it as a triptych is not known.  Perhaps it was only an artist taking liberties to express his own thoughts.

Each of the three panels is framed in silver metal, attached to a black fabric-covered board that is framed in a gold-tented black wood frame.  The painting is signed and dated in lower right.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the collection of a family from Pennsylvania

Recommended Reading:  Modern by Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style by Bruce Bernstein