Original Painting “The Red Man in Journey” [SOLD]

By the spring of 1971, when this painting was completed, Hardin had already had her art exhibited at Coronado Monument, just outside Albuquerque, in 1962, in a one-artist show.  She was only 19 years old at the time.  In 1964, she had her first exhibit at Enchanted Mesa Indian Arts gallery in Albuquerque, in 1969 she had won first prize at the Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial, and, she had been featured on the cover of New Mexico Magazine in 1970.  She had also enrolled at the University of New Mexico to study art but did not yet settle on art as a career.  All of this catapulted her to fame and everyone wanted a Helen Hardin painting. 

She was painting because she enjoyed painting and not because she thought of herself as an artist.  There also was the feeling that she did not want to compete with her artist mother. Regardless of her lack of interest in pursuing art as a career, Hardin did so.  She painted because she loved to paint but the paintings were selling as fast as she finished them and that eventually kept her painting more until finally she was a career artist.

Hardin's paintings of this period were unlike any others by Native or non-Native artists.  They were not pictorial representations of the noble savage or blanket-draped pueblo people in front of a three-story adobe structure, they were colorful and abstract and images from her imagination.  The stippling technique employed by her for background design was akin to rock art texture, but more colorful.  Her red man is truly a red man in this image.  The flora is abstract.  The painting is unique to Hardin and that is what has made her art so desirable and collectible.

The painting is signed in lower right, titled, signed by the artist and dated April 1971 on verso, and framed in a wood frame.

Condition: original excellent condition

Provenance: from a collector of Native paintings in Albuquerque

Recommended Reading:  Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin by Jay Scott