Walter Ufer

(1876-1936)

Isleta, New Mexico 30 x 25in framed 39 3/8 x 34 1/2in

Footnotes

Provenance
Fenn Galleries Ltd., Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Private collection, St. Louis, Missouri, 1992, from the above.
Sale, Bonhams, New York, American Art, November 18, 2015, lot 59.
Private collection, New Mexico.

Walter Ufer was a notable draftsman and colorist celebrated for his honest depictions of the American West. He was born near Cologne, Germany and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. During his formative years, Ufer apprenticed as a printer and engraver. He was inspired to become a painter, however, at the age of seventeen after visiting the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Thereafter he traveled to Germany to study academic realism, training in Hamburg and the Royal Academy in Dresden. Returning stateside in 1900, Ufer worked as an illustrator, printer, portraitist, and art instructor in Chicago, but within a year relocated to Munich in 1911 to further his artistic endeavors. In 1914, Ufer once again found himself in Chicago attracting notice from the city's mayor, Carter Harrison, for his artistic talents.

Ufer was one of three Chicago-based artists (along with Victor Higgins and Ernest Martin Hennings) who were sponsored by the Mayor to travel to the American Southwest and paint its natural beauty. Ufer visited Isleta during the summers of 1914 and 1915. The present work is thought to be from this early period where he completed less than two dozen paintings 'of the pueblo and its surroundings under varying atmospheric conditions.' ¹ A closely related painting entitled Girls of Isleta, circa 1915, is in the Priscilla C. and Joseph N. Tate Collection at the Fred C. Jones Jr. Art Museum of the University of Oklahoma. The portraits and landscapes from this period were lauded in Chicago and firmly established his career as a Southwestern painter. Taos had completely captured his imagination and by 1917, Ufer settled there and became an elected member of the Taos Society of Artists.

Harrison, five-time Mayor of Chicago, encouraged Ufer to paint the Southwest candidly, espousing that 'The man who makes himself the Millet of the Indian, who paints him just as he is, as he lives, will strike the lasting note.' Historically, European-trained artists portrayed Native Americans in a purely romanticized light, further perpetuating the myth of the 'noble savage.' Ufer broke with tradition, depicting Southwest Native Americans engaged in daily activities. In 1928, Ufer wrote, 'I paint the Indian as he is. In the garden digging – In the field working – Riding amongst the sage – Meeting his woman in the desert – Angling for trout – In meditation.' ² Ufer seldom painted images of ceremonial dances or ritual contexts, preferring to represent the material objects of the Pueblo Indians as extensions of their cultural traditions.

In Isleta, New Mexico, Ufer depicts the material culture of the Tiwa pueblo Indians in a scene of everyday life. The young women are shown balancing vessels on their heads and wearing mantas, the traditional knee-length dresses affixed to one shoulder. Most of the women appear unaware of the artist's gaze as they go about their work. There are few, if any, static areas to the scene.

As much of a visual anthropologist as he was, his painterly technique comes to the fore. Ufer skillfully captures the piercing Southwestern light with bravura brushwork. The midday sun casts shadows from the pueblo lodge poles and other objects that create a distinct diagonal throughout the composition. The dresses are all painted in a loose, impressionistic technique, affirming the passing breeze and the women's fastidity. The strings of chiles in the background give context to labor but also visually punctuates and enlivens the scene.

By 1926, Ufer was at the height of his fame. Following several one-man shows and prestigious prizes, he was elected an Academician by the National Academy of Design. Ufer tragically died ten years later, at the age of sixty, from peritonitis. While his popularity has waxed and waned, his importance was acknowledged immediately and his passing lamented. The great American modernist Stuart Davis wrote a tribute to Ufer in the New York Times — 'We honor the memory of a man whose spirit was a living expression of that unflinching honesty and integrity which alone can assure the progress of art in America hand in hand with the other forces on which the hopes of freedom of expression and a higher culture in America depend.' <sup>3

1</sup> T. B. Smith, ed. A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2016, p. 33.

² Macbeth Gallery, Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Walter Ufer [exh. cat.], New York, 1928, p.1.

³ "Vale," The New York Times, August 16, 1936, p. 7.