Twentieth-century American Indian Artists: An Issue of Identity

Year 1997, Issue: 5, 27 - 41, 01.04.1997

Catherine Baldit

Abstract

American artists of ethnic background usually encounter many obstacles on their way to recognition by the art world because the latter is not familiar with what the former paint or sculpt: American Indian artists, for instance, almost always use their cultures songs, legends, traditions and religions as their source of inspiration. In the Southwest region, American Indians have decorated walls— petroglyphs, pictographs, pueblo kiva murals—and objects—pottery, blankets, baskets—for centuries. They started painting on flat surfaces, such as paper, for example in New Mexico, only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when ethnologists encouraged them to draw religious dances and daily activities performed in their villages.

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