News from

Indigo Arts Gallery

Spring 2024

 

Happy Spring!

Fiesta del Tambor - Huichol Nierika yarn painting - Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios (Nayarit, Mexico) c.1970s

Indigo Arts celebrates the season with a collection of vintage Huichol nierika yarn paintings from Nayarit, Mexico.

Dios Venado y Dios Fuego (Deer God and Fire God) nierika yarn painting - Cresencio Perez Robles (Nayarit, Mexico),c.1970s

The visionary works in this collection were created in the 1970s and 1980s by Huichol (Wixárika) shaman artists Cresencio Perez Robles, Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios and David Gonzalez Sanchez. Created with wool yarn pressed into beeswax, they depict the ceremonies, pilgrimages, visions and the peyote quest of Huichol tradition.

The Deer God, the Shaman and the Maize of Five Colors nierika yarn painting - Cresencio Perez Robles (Nayarit, Mexico),c.1970s

The Sacred Place of Shadows nierika yarn painting - Cresencio Perez Robles (Nayarit, Mexico),1988

Cresencio Perez Robles (undated photo)

Dios Venado y Dios Fuego (Deer God and Fire God) detail of nierika yarn painting - Cresencio Perez Robles (Nayarit, Mexico),c.1970s

Fiesta del Tambor - detail of Huichol Nierika yarn painting - Guadalupe Gonzalez Rios (Nayarit, Mexico) c.1970s

Other new arrivals at Indigo Arts include more clay muñeca sculptures of the 1980s by the Oaxaca maestra, Josefina Aguilar Alcantara.

Woman with a Canon - Josefina Aguilar (Ocotlan, Oaxaca, Mexico) c.1980s

Woman carrying a watermelon and child clay muñeca figure - Josefina Aguilar (Ocotlan, Oaxaca, Mexico) c.1980s

Josefina and her three sisters learned the art from their mother, Isaura Aguilar. She sold pieces to the collector Nelson Rockefeller in the mid-1970s, and collectors have made the pilgrimage to her home in Ocotlan de Morelos ever since. Though largely blind since 2014, Josefina was recently still sculpting her muñecas by memory.

Josefina Aguilar at work in 1977 (from Folk Treasures of Mexico: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection by Marion Oettinger, Jr.)

Josefina Aguilar at work in her Ocotlan studio, c.1990. (photo by A H Fisher)

Some News of the Artists

Two leading artists of the Oshogbo school in post-independence Nigeria are included in Foreigners Everywhere, the central exhibit at the Venice Biennale which opened on April 20, 2024:

Twins Seven-Seven (1944 – 2011) and Susanne Wenger (Adunni Olorisha) (1915 - 2009). Indigo Arts offers works by both artists.

Twins Seven-Seven work at Venice Biennale

Susanne Wenger work at Venice Biennale

Twins Seven-Seven at Indigo Arts, 2004

Susanne Wenger (undated photo - c.1960s)

The Anti-Bird Ghost in a War with the Red Crows - etching - Twins Seven-Seven (Nigeria, 1944-2011) 1960s.

Self-Portrait of the Artist as the Survivor of Seven Pairs of Twins - Twins Seven-Seven (Nigeria) c.1972

Iwin series (Dancers on Purple) - Susanne Wenger (b. 1915, Austria - 2009, Nigeria),1960

Iwin series (Figures with Leopard) - Susanne Wenger (b. 1915, Austria - 2009, Nigeria),1960

Cuban Self-Taught: Paintings from the Indigo Arts Collection

continues at the Zephirin-Giannetta Gallery in Ardmore, PA.

El Chivo (detail) Roberto Torres Lameda (Cuba) 2019

The Enduring Spirit of

HAITIAN METAL SCULPTURE

continues at the SFO Museum to August 25, 2024

SFO International Airport - International Terminal

Indigo Arts has loaned sculptural works by Haitian artists Murat Brierre, Serge Jolimeau and Gabriel Bien-Aimé to this ground-breaking exhibition:

Haiti has long celebrated a rich artistic and cultural heritage. Georges Liautaud (1899–1991) ignited the Haitian metal sculpture movement in the 1950s in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti. A blacksmith by trade, he fashioned crosses for public cemeteries before creating more elaborate cut-metal works. Liautaud disseminated the distinctly Haitian art form to emerging artists, such as Murat Brièrre (1938–88) and the Louisjuste brothers, Sérésier, Janvier, and Joseph (1940–89). They, in turn, taught others in Croix-des-Bouquets, including Gabriel Bien-Aimé (b. 1951) and Serge Jolimeau (b. 1952), Haiti’s two leading metal sculptors working today.

Dancing figure  2021

Gabriel Bien-Aimé (b. 1951)

Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti

recycled steel oil drum

Collection of Leonard Majzlin, courtesy of Indigo Arts Gallery

Bird woman  c. 1995   

Serge Jolimeau (b. 1952)

Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti

recycled steel oil drum

Courtesy of Indigo Arts Gallery

Discarded steel oil drums have historically served as the base material for Haitian metal artists. The drums’ lids are cut open with a chisel and hammer and a long vertical split is made along the side of the drums. The interiors are filled with dried sugarcane or grass and lit on fire to remove any grime; once cool, the drums are flattened into sheets. Designs are chalked on; pieces are then cut and sculpted using only hand tools and further enhanced by hammering, embossing, cutting holes, and bending the metal. Sculptures reflect everyday life portraits, imaginative themes, and motifs of Haitian Vodou, an African Diasporic religion. Some of the many forms that appear include angels and winged creatures, mermaids and other aquatic figures, musical bands, animals, and earthly, paradisiacal scenes.

....

Entwined figures  c. 1960s

Murat Brièrre (1938–88)

Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti

recycled steel oil drum

Courtesy of Indigo Arts Galley

This exhibition honors some of Haiti’s most important metal sculptors, including Liautaud, Brièrre, the Louisjuste brothers, Bien-Aimé, and Jolimeau whose work reflects the enduring spirit of Haiti.

(from the exhibition catalog)