Artists Who Expand Views of the Southwest

You may know Georgia O’Keeffe, but have you heard of Tonita Peña (San Ildefonso Pueblo/Cochiti Pueblo)? Over the course of the 20th century, the American Southwest has inspired a range of diverse artists.

Located near the US-Mexico border, the Southwest is where different communities converge. Some artists’ families have lived in this borderland for generations. Others came from the East and West coasts of the United States, and others from Mexico. All these artists—Indigenous, Mexican, and white —expand narratives about modern art by presenting new visions of the Southwest.

See a selection of their works at the National Gallery in Borderlands: Expanded Views of the Southwest. This installation is on view in the American Places galleries through January 5, 2025.

Mexican artist Graciela Iturbide took this photograph in the Sonoran Desert near the border with Arizona. In the 1970s, Iturbide worked for the National Indigenous Institute documenting Indigenous cultures in Mexico. This image is from a series about the Seri people, a small community in Sonora.

To Iturbide this photograph represents the ways in which capitalism changed the Seri way of life. The Seri took what they needed from Western technologies—such as the tape recorder held by the woman in the image. At the same time, they preserved their ancestral traditions and values. Iturbide called the figure in the photograph “mujer angel” (angel woman) because she looks like she could fly off into the desert.

Iturbide, who initially studied filmmaking, discovered photography while working for Manuel Álvarez Bravo from 1970 to 1971. She developed a characteristic style that she described as “photo essays.” She was also influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson , whom she met in Europe.

Tonita Peña (San Ildefonso Pueblo/Cochiti Pueblo) was the only woman in the San Ildefonso School, a group of watercolor painters. Across hundreds of watercolors, Peña depicted Pueblo dances that were open to the public, such as this parrot dance. But while she rendered these with precise detail, most of the backgrounds in her paintings are blank. A dance performance activates the sacred site and its environment. By leaving an empty background, Peña neutralized the space surrounding the figures, following Pueblo values.

In many Pueblo communities of the Southwest, figurative painting was traditionally a men’s activity, while women created symbolic designs, including on pottery. In the early 1900s, it became more common for men to paint designs on vessels. Hesitancy about women painting scenes on paper has shifted only recently. Peña faced discrimination from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences in the early 20th century. Despite these obstacles, Peña used painting to open a window onto her community on her own terms.

Mexican artist Federico Cantú often combined myth with modern symbolism, and he was the only major painter at the time depicting religious themes in Mexico. Cantú inserted symbols of the Southwest into larger religious and cultural narratives, combining a distinct Mexican style with biblical subject matter.

This engraving depicts Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fleeing to Egypt for their safety. The large saguaro cactus in the center of the composition evokes the desert landscapes of Cantú’s youth. He was born in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and spent his childhood split between his birthplace and San Antonio, Texas. This experience was common for those who lived near the borderlands.

While he was aware of the Mexican muralist movement, and even studied fresco painting with Diego Rivera, Cantú had a distinct style. He adhered to older and more academic forms of painting and sculpture. He traveled to Europe from 1925 through 1934, which deeply influenced his work. In Paris he met various avant garde artists and studied with sculptor José de Creeft . Cantú’s career spanned a lifetime. He worked over 65 years as painter, engraver, printmaker, designer, and sculptor of monumental works.

Gene Kloss often worked from recollection, which lends prints like Monument to Space a surreal quality, like partially remembered dreams. Kloss would sometimes use different techniques on the same plate. Here, she combined aquatint and drypoint to achieve the formal and atmospheric qualities she wanted . Aquatint uses etching to produce a range of tones, like those we see in the print’s cloud-filled sky. Drypoint creates strong lines with textured edges. Here, Kloss used it to render the buttes, commanding land formations that are common in parts of the Southwest.

Gene Kloss (born Alice Geneva Glasier) graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1924 with a degree in fine art. She established a reputation as a skilled printmaker and painter, working primarily in etching, oil, and watercolor.

Gene and her husband, poet and composer Phillips Kloss, discovered the beauty of Taos Canyon, New Mexico, on their honeymoon. Awestruck, they returned every summer, and the terrain and rich history of the Southwest fueled Kloss’s creativity. She was particularly inspired by the cultural convergence of Indigenous and Hispanic people in New Mexico. In her lifetime she etched over 600 copper plates, producing editions of five to 250 prints. Impressively, she manually pulled every print until her 70s, when she purchased a motorized press.  

Andrew Tsinajinnie (Diné) was a watercolor painter, muralist, and illustrator. Tsinajinnie used many styles throughout his career, but his Diné (Navajo) culture remained a constant inspiration. He was best known for paintings of Diné everyday life. Here, Tsinajinnie shows three Diné women engaged in different stages of making a textile: carding, spinning, and weaving. In Diné culture, weaving is connected to cosmologies and ways of being. Making textiles is a collaborative process that involves entire families.

Working primarily during the mid-to-late 20th century, Tsinajinnie was connected to a long legacy of Indigenous watercolor painters in the Southwest. At the Santa Fe Indian School (“the Studio”), he learned a style of painting influenced by San Ildefonso Pueblo artists like Awa Tsireh and Tonita Peña .

During the New Deal era, Tsinajinnie painted murals in Arizona and New Mexico for the Works Progress Administration. He also served in the US Air Force during World War II. Tsinajinnie then became a full-time artist in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he also illustrated magazines and books.

Ruth Asawa was primarily a sculptor, widely known for looped-wire works inspired by organic forms. Desert Plant is a lithograph that echoes the form of those sculptures. The organic shape resembles the dried foliage of the desert under a bright piercing sun. Succulents , another print Asawa made at the same lithography workshop, also echoes the circular plant patterns that she was intimately familiar with. Its thick, loose marks create a dream-like, ethereal texture.

Asawa was born in Norwalk, California. During World War II, she and her family were removed from their homes and forced to live in internment camps due to anti-Japanese sentiment. Asawa was interned for 16 months and spent most of her free time drawing and painting. After the war, she attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where her teachers included painter Josef Albers, dancer Merce Cunningham, and architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller. Circular forms would continually show up in Asawa’s work.

In 1946, Asawa first learned the looped wire technique she would use for her sculptures from a craftsman on a trip to Toluca, Mexico. In 1965, Albers recommended her for a fellowship at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, California. The workshop aimed to revive the art of traditional lithography and collaborative printing by bringing artists and printers together. Leaving her children and husband in San Francisco, Asawa worked with seven accomplished printers for two months. She created 54 lithographs, including Desert Plant and Succulents, from her original works.

Like many artists before her, photographer Alma Lavenson was drawn to Taos, New Mexico, by its magnificent terrain and Indigenous architecture. By the time she visited Taos, its distinctive Pueblo, constructed from sun-dried adobe blocks, had existed in some form for almost 1,000 years.

Her 1944 photograph Taos, New Mexico depicts a portion of the Pueblo in strong sunlight. A cropped composition spotlights the shapes that come together to form the Pueblo: repeated rectangles, trapezoids, squares, and circles.

Striking shadows animate the vigas (cedar logs) that bolster the Pueblo’s roof and create crisp linear patterns beneath the wooden ladder used to access its rooms . Shade falls heavily over the door and steps at the photograph’s center, hinting at a cool, sheltered interior. Lavenson was inspired by the sharp focus and close range of other West Coast photographers such as Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. She approached architectural subjects with a keen eye for light and form.

Lavenson photographed other building types found in the Southwest: churches, burial grounds, and kivas (Indigenous ceremonial structures). She worked in many places, including Taos and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and Mesa Verde, Colorado.

Awa Tsireh (San Ildefonso Pueblo), whose name means “Cattail Bird,” was one of the best-known Indigenous painters in North America during the mid-20th century. His art was celebrated across the continent and the world during a time when the US government attacked Indigenous cultural practices and promoted policies aimed at assimilation.

In his paintings, Awa Tsireh honored important images in Pueblo life. The kossa (also known as koshare) figures, for example, are ritual clowns who perform spiritual, ceremonial, and social roles. When painting Pueblo subjects, Awa Tsireh protected sacred knowledge from outsider audiences. Other Indigenous artists who grappled with similar issues include Tonita Peña (San Ildefonso Pueblo/Cochiti Pueblo), Richard Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Andrew Tsinajinnie (Diné), and Fred Kabotie (Hopi) .

During Awa Tsireh’s lifetime, his paintings traveled to Chicago; New York City; Washington, DC; and San Francisco—as well as Spain and Italy. He also created metalwork and painted pottery. His painting style and success selling his works inspired other Indigenous artists to work in watercolor.  

Marjorie Content’s portrait of Adam Trujillo holding the hand of his young son Pat captures their tender relationship. It also shows the persistent vitality of the Taos Pueblo people and their cultural traditions.

Content was working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, photographing Indigenous people of the Southwest. The project was ethnographic, but she forged a friendship with Trujillo, a Pueblo dancer, as well as his wife Maria and their children. Content’s photographs of the family defy false ideas of Indigenous people as members of a static, dying race.

Content was born in New York City to an affluent family and raised in a vibrant cultural world. In her youth she frequented galleries and museums and took painting classes in Greenwich Village. She met photographer Alfred Stieglitz—one of many artists and intellectuals with whom she would socialize. Content worked for a time at the Sunwise Turn, an avant-garde Manhattan bookstore operated by women. She began taking photographs in the 1920s, encouraged by painter Georgia O’Keeffe and fellow photographer Consuelo Kanaga. Content made photographic studies of various subjects, including clouds and flowers as well as portraits of friends such as artist Gordan Grant. Grant admired Native American art and dance, and Content went with him on trips to the American West. The geography and culture of the Southwest remained important to Content throughout her life. She periodically traveled to the region with O’Keeffe, Kanaga, and other companions.

Emilio Amero’s practiced hand shows in the textures of his lithograph, Mother and Child. The contorting and compressing figures give the impression of flesh turned to stone. But Amero was not only a printmaker and painter but also a photographer. He likely made Pots at Market during his travels through southern Mexico. In the image, Amero captured the presence of everyday objects, the round vessels arranged on a semi-paved outdoor space. The bare foot peeking through provides context for the scale.

Amero was born in Ixtlahuaca, Mexico, and traveled between his homeland and the United States for many years. Amero was José Clemente Orozco’s assistant while at the national preparatory school. At the time, he painted in fresco and on canvas. He would also become a graphic designer, photographer, filmmaker, printmaker, gallery owner, and professor.

Amero was one of the pioneers of vanguard film in Mexico. His short film 777 led to a collaboration with poet Federico García Lorca and photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Amero left Mexico in 1925 and settled in New York, where he worked as an illustrator for publications such as the New Yorker and Life. In 1930 he and artist Jean Charlot founded the Escuela de Litografía (then the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas). In 1946 he accepted a job at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he taught graphic arts until his retirement in 1967.