King Galleries in Santa Fe is one of the most important dealers of contemporary Native American pottery, representing artists such as Nancy Youngblood, Jared Tso, and Daniel Begay. Owner Charles King says, “While there are fewer younger potters today, they are more committed to the clay and among the most innovative in a generation.” And while some of these Native American artists may live in other parts of the Southwest, King says, “Santa Fe is a focal point for them to meet, discuss art, talk about future projects, and immerse themselves in the world of art. The future in native pottery is exciting.”
The modern non-Indigenous art world of Santa Fe can trace its lineage back to the year 1898, and, perhaps ironically, not to Santa Fe itself but to the nearby smaller town of Taos. Two young painters from the Eastern U.S., Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips, were en route from Denver to Mexico when their horse-drawn wagon lost a wheel on a mountain road in northern New Mexico, causing them to be detained. Captivated by the picturesqueness of the Taos Valley and its people, they decided to stay and thus formed the nucleus of what eventually became the Taos Society of Artists, founded in 1915. In addition to the original two, works by Taos artists such as E. Irving Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, Joseph Henry Sharp, E. Martin Hennings, and Nicolai Fechin are now highly prized by collectors.
The trend of artists coming to New Mexico because of its unique quality of light, beautiful landscape, and cultural fascination gained steam, and soon Santa Fe had an artists’ group of its own, the Cinco Pintores (“Five Painters”—all Anglos despite the Spanish name), which flourished during the 1920s. The first generation of artists had a “romantic vision of Native life,” says Means. “They helped establish Santa Fe as an art colony, and their work brought national and international attention. But while they built institutions and galleries, Native artists were often excluded from those early spaces or framed through an outsider’s lens. That exclusion left a mark we’re still working to heal. But today, more Native voices are helping reshape the narrative from within.”
Toward the middle of the 20th century, a new contingent of artists, including Andrew Dasburg, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O’Keeffe, began to arrive in the Santa Fe area. Many of them were less interested than their predecessors in painting Indians, mountainous landscapes, and picturesque processions; some of them were even abstractionists. What captivated them was an ineffable quality of light, something that is apparent even to the causal visitor. Ken Marvel, owner of LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, says, “Marsden Hartley came out here, and it probably transformed his art. Wolf Kahn would talk about how the light is unlike the light he found anywhere else. The feeling of the place, its light and special sensibility, inspires the artist even more than the extraordinary landscape.”
For contemporary artists today, Santa Fe can mean various things. Few of them are connected to the old romantic tradition. Many are attracted by the sense of community, by the fact that Santa Fe invests in artists through schools, programs, artist spaces, and, of course, galleries. Many have found themselves changed by the place, though in different ways from their predecessors. When artist Anna Rotty arrived in New Mexico from the East Coast, she was struck by water’s preciousness in the desert region. She now explores that theme in photographs exhibited as sculptural installations. She says she hopes to “evoke water not as a resource, but as living kin with memory and knowledge we can learn from.” Chloe Hanken, a young artist with a printmaking-based practice who shows with Strata Gallery, says that coming to New Mexico has deeply affected her approach to her chosen subject matter, landscape. “Landscape, especially in this area,” Hanken says, “often becomes a placeholder for outsider fantasies about the West. Contrast that with the deep connections present in communities who have lived here for time immemorial, and an unshakable dichotomy becomes clear. I have recently become more interested in making images that offer critiques of memory and play with the fantasies around landscape representation rather than feign objectivity.”
