Basket Dancers

Awa Tsireh, Basket Dancers, ca. 1930-1940, ink and colored ink on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1979.144.41
Copied Awa Tsireh, Basket Dancers, ca. 1930-1940, ink and colored ink on paperboard, sheet: 22 1827 in. (56.268.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1979.144.41

Artwork Details

Title
Basket Dancers
Artist
Date
ca. 1930-1940
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
sheet: 22 1827 in. (56.268.5 cm)
Credit Line
Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin
Mediums
Mediums Description
ink and colored ink on paperboard
Classifications
Keywords
  • Figure group
  • Indian
  • Dress — ceremonial — Indian dress
  • Ceremony — dance — Basket Dance
  • Animal — skunk
Object Number
1979.144.41

Artwork Description

The paintings of Awa Tsireh (1898-1955), who was also known by his Spanish name, Alfonso Roybal, represent an encounter between the art traditions of native Pueblo peoples in the southwestern United States and the American modernist art style begun in New York in the early twentieth century. The son of distinguished potters, Awa Tsireh translated geometic pottery designs into stylized watercolors that feature the ceremonial dancers and practices of Pueblo communities. But Awa Tsireh's work is more than an amalgam of traditional and modernist design. At a time when the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs attempted to restrict Pueblo cultural and religious practices, the watercolors of Awa Tsireh and other Pueblo artists helped to affirm the importance of ceremonial dance and tirual to cultural survival.

Awa Tsireh's paintings quickly found an audience among the artists, writers, and archaeologists who descended on Santa Fe in great numbers in the late 1910s and 1920s. Painter John Sloan and poet Alice Corbin Henderson took a particular interest and arranged for his watercolors to be exhibited in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere. Henderson shared with the young Pueblo painter books on European and American modernism and Japanese woodblock prints, as well as South Asian miniatures and ancient Egyptian art that provided soure material for his stylized paintings. In this way, he redefined contemporary Pueblo art and created a new, pan-Pueblo style.

The paintings in this exhibition were donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1979 by the Hendersons' daughter, Alice H. Rossin.

Gallery Label
As Awa Tsireh's paintings developed over the 1920s, his figures became increasingly stylized. Many have round sightless eyes, flat limbs, and featureless bodies shown frontally but supported by legs and feet in profile that have art deco and Egyptian revival overtones. Less descriptive than his early dance paintings, the later watercolors met with great popular success among artists and collectors who valued their modernist appearance.