Tonita Peña

Tonita Peña
Tonita Peña
Quah Ah
Born	May 10, 1893; San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, U.S.
Died	September 9, 1949 (aged 56); Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico, U.S.
Resting place	Cochiti Pueblo Cemetery, Cochiti Pueblo, Sandoval County, New Mexico
Known for	American Indian painting, Pueblo art
Style	pen and ink with watercolor on paper, murals
Movement	San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group
Spouse(s)	Juan Rosario Chavez (m. 1908–1910; death),; Felipe Herrera (m. 1913–1920; death),; Epitacio Arquero (m.1922–1949; death)
Children	6, including Joe Hilario Herrera
Relatives	Martina Vigil Montoya (aunt)
Patron(s)	Edgar Lee Hewett

Tonita Peña (born 1893 in San Ildefonso, died 1949 in Kewa Pueblo, New Mexico^[1]) born as Quah Ah (meaning white coral beads) but also used the name Tonita Vigil Peña and María Antonia Tonita Peña.^[2] Peña was a renowned Pueblo artist, specializing in pen and ink on paper embellished with watercolor.^[1] She was a well-known and influential Native American artist and art teacher of the early 1920s and 1930s.^[2]

Early life and education

Tonita Peña was born on May 10, 1893, at San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico to parents Ascensión Vigil Peña and Natividad Peña.^[1] When she was 12, her mother and younger sister died, as a results of complications due to the flu.^[3] Her father was unable to care for her and she was taken to Cochití Pueblo and was brought up by her aunt Martina Vigil Montoya, a prominent Cochití Pueblo potter.^[3]^[4] Peña attended St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe.^[5]

Career and later life

Edgar Lee Hewett, an anthropologist involved in supervising the nearby Frijoles Canyon excavations (now Bandelier National Monument) was instrumental in developing the careers of several San Ildefonso "self taught" artists including Tonita Peña. Hewett purchased Peña's paintings for the Museum of New Mexico and supplied her with quality paint and paper.^[6] Peña began gaining more notoriety by the end of the 1910s selling an increasing amount to her work to collectors and the La Fonda Hotel. Much of this early work was done of Pueblo cultural subject matter, in a style inspired by historic Native American works, however her use of an artists easel and Western painting mediums gained her acceptance among her European-American contemporaries in the art world. At the age of 25, she exhibited her work at museums and galleries in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area.^[7]

In the early 1920s Tonita did not know how much her painting sold for at the Museum of New Mexico, so she wrote letters to the administrators because a local farmer was worried that she got paid too little.^[8]

In the 1930s Peña was an instructor at the Santa Fe Indian School and at the Albuquerque Indian School^[1] and the only woman painter of the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Julian Martinez, Abel Sánchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña.^[9]^[10] As children, these artists attended San Ildefonso day school which was part of the institution of the Dawes Act of 1887, designed to indoctrinate and assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society.^[6]

In 1931, Tonita Peña exhibited at the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts which was presented at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City.^[2]^[11] Works from this exhibition were shown at the 1932 Venice Biennial. That year is the only time Native American artists have shown in the official United States pavilion at that biennial, and Tonita Peña's paintings were part of that exhibition.^[12] Her painting Basket Dance, that had shown in the Venice Biennial was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for $225.^[13] This was the highest price paid up to this time for a Pueblo painting and most Native American paintings at this time were selling between $2 and $25.^[2]

Peña's work was part of Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–2021), a survey at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York.^[14]

Death and legacy

Peña died on September 9, 1949. At Peña's death, all of her remaining paintings and personal effects were burned in compliance with Pueblo customs.^[1]^[3]

Native arts, from utilitarian arts to easel arts, influenced modern Eurouopean-Americans' changing perspectives of the aesthetic and spiritual value of Native American cultures and identities.^[15] Peña's artwork emphasized the role of women in everyday life and is credited with expanding the expectations of women in art by refusing to limit herself to the customary female role of potter.^[16] Her son Joe Herrera, heavily influenced his mother, became an important figure in American modernism.^[17]

Peña's artwork is in the collections at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Michigan, the Acequia Madre House in Santa Fe, NM the Heard Museum in Arizona, the Dartmouth College Collection in New Hampshire, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard.^[18]^[16] She has continued to have national art exhibitions posthumously.^[16]

A crater on the planet Venus has been named after Tonita Peña.^[19]

Affecting social change

Peña did not accept the established roles of women in arts within the early 20th-century Native American art market. She focused primarily on two-dimensional works on paper rather than the more established accepted pottery medium of her contemporaries.^[3] Beyond her choice of medium, Peña's subject matter also pushed gender boundaries. At the time she was active, only men were allowed to portray living individuals in their work.^[18] Another way Peña rejected traditional roles of women was how she approached her role as a mother. Contrary to the traditions of her tribe and America at large, she chose to have others raise some of her children, so that she could focus on completing her education and also furthering her career. During her lifetime, the U.S. government pushed the idea of assimilating Native Americans within American culture. Peña's artwork emerged as a site of resistance towards those efforts, reaffirming the importance of ceremonial dances as crucial for Pueblo cultural survival.^[20]

Critics

Critique of Peña can be found within the framework of studying "traditional" Native American art, versus "White patronage" supported art of Native American art.^[21] Artwork made by Native Americans and collected by White patrons served no traditional function for in Native American communities.^[15] Peña's critics were not only the established art world, but also her own tribe. Many of Peña's paintings depicted sacred rituals and her fellow tribespeople believed these were inappropriate subject matters to portray and share outside the tribe.^[3]^[16] Epitacio Arquero, Governor of the Pueblo and Peña's husband at the time of the most heated protests, defended the subject matter saying her paintings only depicted subject matter already visible to outsiders. Following the controversy, Peña's work changed to focus on Pueblo culture and traditions that were not sacred or private in nature.^[3]

Personal life

Tonita married three times and had six children. Peña's first marriage was in 1908 at the age of 15, arranged by village elders to Juan Rosario Chavez,^[3] however he died in 1912.^[5] She had two children with Chavez, and after he died she was able to leave the children temporarily with her aunt Martina Montoya, so she could finish her high school education.^[5]

In 1913 Peña had a second arranged marriage, this time to Felipe Herrera, who died in a mining accident in 1920.^[1]^[3] Her son Joe Hilario Herrera (with husband Felipe Herrera) was a notable painter.^[22]^[23]

Her final marriage was in 1922 to Epitacio Arquero, a politician that important tribal offices at the Cochiti Pueblo,^[24] and together they had three children.^[25]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Tonita Peña Pueblo Painter". Native American Art. 2010. Retrieved October 21, 2014.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Ojibwa. "Indians 101: Art Museums Discover Indian Art". Native American Netroots, Daily Kos. Retrieved October 21, 2014.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Jacobs, Margaret D. (1999). Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879–1934. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 176. ISBN 978-0-8032-2586-2. Tonita Quah Ah Pena Arquero.
^ Goldberg, Jodi. "Tonita Peña". Famous Artists. ERCSD. Retrieved October 21, 2014.
^ ^a ^b ^c Gray, Samuel L. (1990). Tonita Peña: Quah Ah, 1893-1949. Avanyu Pub. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-936755-17-5.
^ ^a ^b Rushing III, W. Jackson (1999). Native American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415137489.
^ "Tonita Vigil Peña (1893–1949) Quah Ah". Adobe Gallery of the Southwest Indian. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
^ Jacobs, Margaret D. Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879–1934. U of Nebraska Press, 1999. Tonita Pena (Quah Ah), Pueblo Painter: Asserting Identity Through Continuity and Change (scholarly article)
^ Wander, Robin (February 22, 2012). "Highlights from Stanford's Native American paintings collection are showcased in Memory and Markets: Pueblo Painting in the Early 20th Century". Stanford News. Stanford University, Cantor Art Center. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
^ Cort, Carol; Sonneborn, Liz (2002). A to Z of American Women in the Visual Arts. New York, NY: Facs on File, Inc. p. 174. ISBN 0-8160-4397-3.
^ Ojibwa (October 28, 2011). "Art Museums Discover Indian Art". Native American Netroots. Retrieved October 21, 2014.
^ Horton, Jessica L. (Spring 2015). "A Cloudburst in Venice: Fred Kabotie and the U.S. Pavilion of 1932". American Art. 29 (1): 56. doi:10.1086/681655. JSTOR 10.1086/681655. S2CID 191054239. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
^ Horton, Jessica L. (Spring 2015). "A Cloudburst in Venice: Fred Kabotie and the U.S. Pavilion of 1932". American Art. 29 (1): 75. doi:10.1086/681655. JSTOR 10.1086/681655. S2CID 191054239. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
^ "Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting". National Museum of the American Indian. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
^ ^a ^b Anthes, Bill (2006). Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822338661.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Cain, Corinne. "Artwork by Tonita Peña". Savvy Collector. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
^ "'Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting' showcases art by mother and son Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera at Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art". Oklahoman.com. 2018-01-22. Retrieved 2019-06-01.
^ ^a ^b "Lobby Exhibition". Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
^ Cattermole, Peter (1997). Atlas of Venus. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 129. ISBN 0521496527.
^ Jantzer-White, Marilee (1994). "Tonita Peña (Quah Ah), Pueblo Painter: Asserting Identity Through Continuity and Change". American Indian Quarterly. 13 (3): 369–82. doi:10.2307/1184742. JSTOR 1184742. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
^ Jantzer-White, Marilee (Summer 1994). "Tonita Peña (Quah Ah), Pueblo Painter: Asserting Identity through Continuity and Change". American Indian Quarterly. 18 (3): 369–382. doi:10.2307/1184742. JSTOR 1184742.
^ Marter, Joan M. (2011). The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Oxford University Press. p. 444. ISBN 978-0-19-533579-8.
^ Flynn, Kathryn A. (2012). Public Art and Architecture in New Mexico 1933-1943: A Guide to the New Deal Legacy. Sunstone Press. p. 302. ISBN 978-0-86534-882-0.
^ Broder, Patricia Janis (2013-12-10). Earth Songs, Moon Dreams: Paintings by American Indian Women. Macmillan. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-4668-5972-2.
^ American Indian Culture and Research Journal. American Indian Culture and Research Center, University of California. 2001. p. 60.