RC GORMAN ANTIQUE MODERN NATIVE AMERICAN NAVAJO LITHOGRAPH OLD VINTAGE SOUTHWEST

Description: RARE AND CAPTIVATING VINTAGE LIMITED EDITION NATIVE AMERICAN LITHOGRAPH BY LEGENDARY NATIVE AMERICAN FIGURE PAINTER RC GORMAN. (American 1932-2005) THIS WORK DEPICTS A NATIVE AMERICAN MAN AND WOMAN COUPLE SITTING SIDE BY SIDE DRESSED IN OVERSIZE TRADITIONAL ROBES. THIS WORK IS HAND SIGNED , NUMBERED AND DATED 1975 BY RC GORMAN. THE PARTIALLY FADED EDITION NUMBER IS IN THE LOWER LEFTHAND CORNER, AND THE SIGNATURE AND DATE IS IN THE LOWER RIGHTHAND CORNER. GOOD OVERALL CONDITION. MILD WEAR, AS SHOWN. DIMENSIONS: 26” W x 20” H R. C. Gorman Born: 1932 - Canyon de Chelly, Arizona Died: 2005 - Santa Fe, New Mexico Known for: Abstract female Indian figure painting, lithographs, sculpture Name variants: Rudolph Carl Gorman "I've always felt successful. Even when I wasn't making any money, I just knew it was all there. I always believed in myself. I knew I had talent, and there was just no doubt about it. I just didn't give up." - R.C. Gorman Born in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and raised in a hogan on the Navajo Reservation, R.C. Gorman became one of the Southwest's best-known late 20th-century artists. His signature works were Navajo women in a variety of poses. Many people have been fascinated that he, an Indian artist, became famous in the white man's world, with some calling him the "Picasso of Indian artists." Of this kind of attention, he said: "I wish people would quit pushing my being Indian. The only time I was interviewed as If I were a normal person was by the Jewish Press in Tucson. It was the first time I felt international and almost white. Born in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, and raised in a hogan on the Navajo Reservation, R.C. Gorman became one of the Southwest's best-known late 20th-century artists. His signature works were Navajo women in a variety of poses. Many people have been fascinated that he, an Indian artist, became famous in the white man's world, with some calling him the "Picasso of Indian artists." Of this kind of attention, he said: "I wish people would quit pushing my being Indian. The only time I was interviewed as If I were a normal person was by the Jewish Press in Tucson. It was the first time I felt international and almost white". (Samuels 222) His parents were Carl Nelson Gorman, an artist, and Adella Katherine Brown. He abandoned the name "Rudolph" and signed his artwork with the initials R.C. He grew up during the Depression and later said his first materials were "sand, rocks, and mud." His father, Carl, was one of the first Indian artists to depart from tradition and paint from his own personal expression. Still, R.C. seldom saw his father during his early childhood because he was away during the war, serving in the South Pacific as one of the Code Talkers---Navajos who used their language as secret code to foil the enemy... Fast forward. Photographs of Taos' Ledoux Street taken by Mildred Tolbert in 1968 show an exotic, charming, untamed, third-world, block-long dirt path. The beginning of the street was lined exclusively with private residences, except for one gallery, The Navajo Gallery. Its owner was Taos legend, R.C. Gorman. The end of the road led to what was then the Harwood Library - now the Harwood Museum of Art. Imagine the visitors to the gallery trudging down the little street with no parking and no signage - the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Onassis, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Tab Hunter, Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Peck, Lee Marvin, Senator Barry Goldwater, Arlo Guthrie, and fellow artist Andy Warhol. As Virginia Dooley writes in The Taos Diaries 1968-1998, "Whenever Gorman visited the Big Apple, Warhol gave him the grand tour a la Studio 54 and other underbelly haunts. In 1978, they mounted a successful exhibit together in New York that was jokingly referred to as the show 'the odd couple." Dooley notes that visitors to the Navajo Gallery " . . . would have to find the entrance to the driveway, walk up to the gallery window, duck under a low archway into a hidden courtyard, and find the swinging door which led, finally, to a surprisingly spacious gallery. 'Where is the Navajo Gallery?' became the most-asked question of people roaming around with confusing street maps in hand." If visitors managed to find the gallery, they would be greeted by a bejeweled handsome Navajo man, larger than life, surrounded by his cats, with either a Cadillac or Mercedes parked nearby. Gorman's charm and humor enchanted the locals. He trademarked himself with flamboyant accessories - bandana headbands, Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, beads, and gold. His attire would foretell the immense popularity and celebrity that would emerge from the little dusty street in Taos. The artist was born Rudolph Carl Gorman in 1931 in Chinle (pronounced Chin-lee), Arizona. Chinle is near the geographic center of the Navajo Nation, the largest tract of land reserved for Native Americans in the United States. Gorman was the son of Adele Katherine Brown and Carl Gorman - the renowned artist, teacher, and Navajo Code Talker. Carl Gorman was the oldest of the original twenty-nine Navajos who volunteered to form a secret division of the Marine Corps. Carl recalls that "R.C. always carried a tablet and drew wherever we were. We were dipping sheep once, and he got a little girl to model for him. A white man working with us saw the drawing, got me, and said, 'Look. Someday he's going to be a great artist.' As a boy, Gorman modeled animals and toys out of clay from the local swimming hole. Later he drew with charcoal on rocks. When he started school and discovered pencils, papers, and books, he began drawing with abandon. His first school, Chinle Public School, was a one-room structure heated with a wood stove. He recalled that his first work of art in school was a drawing of a naked woman; it brought spankings from both his teacher and his mother. In 1943, Gorman enrolled in a Catholic boarding school on the Navajo reservation. In the fall of 1944, he switched to the Ganado Presbyterian Mission School. In the seventh grade, Gorman began selling his artwork to nurses and doctors at the mission school. After graduating in 1951, Gorman joined the Navy before entering college. The Navy did not deflect Gorman's need to draw. He sketched the girlfriends of his colleagues, collecting pocket change in exchange. At the Navy's Guam Territorial College and later at Arizona State College (Northern Arizona University), Gorman studied literature and creative writing, always with an emphasis or minor in art. In the summer of 1956, he worked at Disneyland, where he dressed as a Native American and paddled a canoe. In 1958, he received the first scholarship from the Navajo Tribal Council to study outside the United States and enrolled in the art program at Mexico City College. There he learned of and was influenced by the work of Diego Rivera. He later studied art at San Francisco State University, where he also worked as a model. R.C. worked as an artists' model for several university and private classes throughout the Bay area. This proved an invaluable experience in his training. While posing, he couldn't participate in the ranks or receive critiques from the instructors, but he listened, observed, and absorbed the knowledge of several masters." (http://nativeamerican-art.com). The Navajo Tribal Council awarded Gorman a grant to attend Mexico City College in 1958, shortly after he returned to San Francisco. During that time, he worked as a nude model. In the bay area, he worked in a post office branch in the evenings and painted during the day. Then came a pivotal event in Gorman's life: his discovery of Taos, New Mexico. It was love at first sight. That year, 1964, Dorothy Brett agreed to handle Gorman's work and exhibited it at the Manchester Gallery on Ledoux Street. Gorman continued to make long trips, living and studying in San Fransisco and Mexico City. During an important visit to Mexico City in 1966, Gorman did his first work in lithography under the tutelage of noted Mexican printmaker Jose Sanchez. Back in Taos, Gorman's shows continued to sell out. With his hard-earned money and a loan from his parents, Gorman bought the Manchester Gallery and opened the Navajo Gallery, the first Native American-owned gallery. The Navajo Gallery held its first group exhibition in May 1969. The gallery roster included Patrick Swazo Hinds, Robert Draper, Al Momaday, Helen Hardin, Pablita Velarde, Charles Lovato, Cynthia Bissell, Dorothy Brett, and R.C.'s father, Carl Gorman. R.C. Gorman died at age 74 in Albuqurque's University Hospital. New Mexico's Governor, Bill Richardson, ordered that flags be flown at half-mast in Gorman's honor. During his lifetime R.C Gorman was honored in important and unusual ways, including an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, College of Ganado, Ganado, Arizona (1978), R. C. Gorman Day, State of New Mexico (January 8, 1979), Doctorate of Humane Letters, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, New Mexico (1980), R. C. Gorman Day, San Francisco, California (March 18, 1986), Humanitarian Award in Fine Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (May 1986), New Mexico's Governor's Award of Excellence (1988), Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona (1995), Honorary United Nations 50-year Chairman for New Mexico (1995), A Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (2002). Harvard University recognized Gorman for notable contributions to American art and Native American culture. Gorman was the only living artist included in Masterworks from the Museum of the American Indian, a 1973 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan bought both Gorman drawings included in the exhibition, and the New York Times dubbed Gorman "the Picasso of American Indian art." Gorman's sensitive approach to human form, natural gifts, and outrageous and extravagant imagination made him one of the most influential and fascinating artists of his time. Out-glitzing the likes of Andy Warhol, Gorman turned brilliance into a commodity--often at the cost of his original raw and striking talent and at the risk of compromising his place in the history of art.

Price: 1200 USD

Location: Pasadena, California

End Time: 2024-08-19T19:27:45.000Z

Shipping Cost: 50 USD