Navajo Chicken Fight

Awa Tsireh, Navajo Chicken Fight, ca. 1925-1930, watercolor and ink on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1979.144.30
Awa Tsireh, Navajo Chicken Fight, ca. 1925-1930, watercolor and ink on paperboard, sheet: 11 1414 14 in. (28.536.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1979.144.30

Artwork Details

Title
Navajo Chicken Fight
Artist
Date
ca. 1925-1930
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
sheet: 11 1414 14 in. (28.536.2 cm)
Credit Line
Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin
Mediums
Mediums Description
watercolor and ink on paperboard
Classifications
Subjects
  • Equestrian
  • Ceremony — Indian
  • Animal — bird — chicken
  • Indian — Navajo
Object Number
1979.144.30

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.

Works by this artist (2 items)

Lisette Model, Sailor and Girl, Sammy's Bar, 1940, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by George W. Story, 1987.15
Sailor and Girl, Sammy’s Bar
Date1940
gelatin silver print
Not on view
Lisette Model, Window, Bonwit Teller, New York, 1939-1940, printed ca. 1939-1940, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2016.40.5, © 1983, Lisette Model Foundation, Inc.
Window, Bonwit Teller, New York
Date1939-1940, printed ca. 1939-1940
gelatin silver print
Not on view

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Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Untitled, ca. 1945-1950, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Lewis and Jean Greenblatt, 2002.86.7
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