Sam Martinez

Little is known about Taos Pueblo painter Sam Martinez.  It is reasonable to infer that he was a contemporary of the group of pioneering artists known as “Three Taos Pueblo Painters.”  These three painters—Albert Lujan, Albert Looking Elk and Juan Mirabal—painted images of their Pueblo in styles that varied greatly from those being developed at neighboring pueblos.  Martinez’s paintings, which were completed on small boards using gouache and oil paints, are notably similar to the works of these artists. His preferred subject, too, was the pueblo, though he focused more on its people than its architecture.  Even his signature—his name, loosely scrawled into the lower corner, along with “Taos Pueblo, NM”—is similar to those used by the Three Taos Pueblo Painters.