Pablita Velarde

From NativeWiki

Pablita Velarde (1918 - January, 2006) was born on the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. At the age of fourteen, she was accepted as first full-time female student in Dorothy Dunn's Santa Fe Studio Art School at the Santa Fe Indian School. There, she become an accomplished painter in the Dunn style, known as "flat painting." In 1939, Velarde was commissioned by the National Parks Service under a grant from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to depict scenes of traditional Pueblo life for visitors to the Bandelier National Monument.

Following her work at Bandelier, Velarde went on to become one of the most accomplished female Native American painters of her generation with solo exhibitions throughout the United States, including her native New Mexico, as well as Florida, and California. In 1953, she was the first woman to receive the Grand Purchase Award at the Philbrook Art Center’s Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Painting. In 1954 the French government honored her with the Palmes Academiques for excellence in art.

Pablita Velarde was best known for her earth paintings, where she used mineral and rock elements, which she ground on a metate and mano until the result was a powdery substance from which she made her paints. She painted almost exclusively on paper supports, and used watercolor and casein in addition to the earth pigments.