Original Watercolor Painting “Warring Avanyu” [SOLD]

This painting was titled by the artist “Warring Avana” which we have interpreted to be ‘Warring Avanyu.”  There are two very yellow Avanyu face-to-face, separated by a symbol that is the Sun.  Below this is a shield with feathers attached.  It is signed in lower right and dated 1978, the year before he passed away.  This was painted on handmade artist paper and is presently not framed.  We can offer it unframed or, for the additional cost of framing, we can offer it framed.

Many of the early San Ildefonso painters experimented with images of mythological birds and the Avanyu.  The Avanyu is thought to be a water serpent responsible for bringing water down the arroyos to the planting fields.  There is a fifteenth- to seventeenth-century petroglyph of an Avanyu at Pajarito Plateau, Bandelier National Monument, so it certainly has been in the pantheon of the Pueblo people for some time.

José Encarnacion Peña (1902-1979) Soqween - So Kwa A Weh (Frost on the Mountain) had been a student of Dorothy Dunn at The Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School in the early 1930s. He had, however, started painting earlier than the 1920s, and continued until his death in 1979, with a break in the continuity. His complete name was José Encarnacion Peña and his Native name was spelled Soqueen, Soqween, or So Kwa a Weh, translated to Frost on the Mountain. Those who remember him in his later years recall that he was called Enky (pronounced "inky").  He was not a prolific painter until the last decade of his life, a time when he resumed painting after decades of working on his farm.

Condition: this Original Watercolor Painting "Warring Avanyu" is in very good condition

Provenance: from the artist’s estate, passed from his wife to her grandson.

Recommended Reading:  American Indian Painting of the Southwest and Plains Areas by Dorothy Dunn (1903-1992)