Tonita Peña

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

• Oasisamerica
• List of Native American artists
• Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas

• Bataille, Gretchen M.; Lisa, Laurie (2005). Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. New York City, NY: Routledge. ISBN 9781138994379. OCLC 960835193.
• Farris, Phoebe (1999). Women Artists of Color: a Bio-critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 56. ISBN 0-313-30374-6. OCLC 40193578.