Painting of an Avanyu surrounding a Polychrome Dish[SOLD]

Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett of the Museum of New Mexico encouraged Julian Martinez (1885-1943) Pocano - Coming of the Spirits to be a painter and even supplied him with paper and paints so he could paint traditional Pueblo dance figures.  This was before Julian began to paint Maria’s pottery.  When he began to paint pottery, he was already an accomplished artist.  He had a natural artistic aptitude and gained proficiency very rapidly.  Once he and Maria became famous for their collaborative pottery, he had very little time for paintings on paper.

This painting was probably completed in the 1930s as it incorporates an image of a Mimbres Polychrome bowl that Julian had seen a photograph of and interpreted it to be a flat disc or a plate because of the two-dimensional photograph.  Julian (from San Ildefonso Pueblo) reproduced this image of feathers on a plate many times on Maria’s black pottery.

Overlaid on the image of the feather plate is what looks to be a Sun image with rays flowing outward from the face.  The plate design is surrounded by an Avanyu (water serpent), an image reproduced many times by Julian on the black pottery.  The Avanyu is a water serpent believed to bring water down the arroyos to the fields. The painting is signed Julian Martinez in lower right.  It is framed in what may be the original Santa Fe Indian School hand carved frame or at least a frame of that period.

Condition: appears to be in original condition but has not been examined out of the frame.

Provenance: from the collection of a family who sold its Santa Fe home and found it desirable to dispose of its contents.

Recommended Reading: The Legacy of Maria Poveka Martinez by Richard Spivey