Painting entitled “Kosa and Tsaveyo” [SOLD]

The life of Gerónima Cruz Montoya is one of success.  As a child, she was sent to the Santa Fe Indian School as were all pueblo children.  She was very unhappy at first but eventually settled in to study.  As the saying goes, if given a lemon, make lemonade, she did just that.  She studied and became well educated to the point that when Dorothy Dunn, the original inspiration for the Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School, left and moved to California, she selected Montoya to take her place, which she did for the next several decades. 

Dunn had selected her as an assistant earlier and put her in charge of the younger children in the painting classes.  She had been a student there but a short time before.  She must have demonstrated abilities early in her student life.  Artist Alfred Morang commented of her "the teacher has a rare grasp of the problems involved.  She does not force the work into any preconceived pattern.  She obviously allows the student to project his own ideas upon paper, and simply guides him into a more rounded development of his initial creative impulse." Tanner 1973

From student to teacher to artist to legend, Montoya has seen it all.  She is now 97 years old and still getting around.  She visited the gallery last year and enjoyed looking at and commenting on all the paintings by her former students.  Her son was in recently and said he was going to bring her back in again to see the additional paintings we have displayed.  We look forward to another visit by her.

This painting of a pair of clowns and an ogre katsina is labeled in pencil "Kosa and Tsaveyo" which probably is the Tewa spelling for what we generally call Koshari, which is a Hopi-Tewa word, and Chaveyo, which is a Hopi-Tewa word.  At Hopi, Chaveyo is an ogre katsina so perhaps it is the same at Ohkay Owingeh.  Hopefully, P'otsúnú will come visit while we still have her painting here and she may explain it to us.  The painting is signed in lower center-right and dated 1947.

Condition:  the painting appears to be on watercolor paper and has some very slight buckling as watercolor paper tends to do but it is very minor.

Provenance: from the collection of a family in Arizona.

Recommended Reading:  Southwest Indian Painting a Changing Art by Clara Lee Tanner