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Harnisch and Company

1970 New Mexico Abstract WC Painting "Young Eagle" by Larry Littlebird (Mod)

1970 New Mexico Abstract WC Painting "Young Eagle" by Larry Littlebird (Mod)

Regular price $1,879.00 USD
Regular price $0.00 USD Sale price $1,879.00 USD
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Up for sale from a recent estate of a well known collector here in Honolulu Hawaii, this 1970 New Mexico original watercolor drawing or painting that is titled "Young Eagle" depicting an abstract bird and was created by the native american activist and artist Larry Littlebird. The condition is described above for more information please check the photos.

Measurements:

Painting 24 inches x 18 inches

More about the artist:

Larry Littlebird (Laguna/Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico) celebrates an indigenous holistic way of life. Growing up at his mother's remote village of Gwish'tee, on the Laguna Pueblo, much of his childhood was spent on the land with his Grandma and Grandpa at their sheep camp. At his father's Pueblo of Kewa, Littlebird immersed himself in his rich oral tradition lineage with elders and kin always around him. These profound experiences rooted in his Pueblo Indian culture and life ways continue to inform and influence Littlebird's work. He describes this as "walking backward into the future" in his 2012 TEDx Talk.

Over the past five decades, Larry Littlebird has been a strong Native voice within his multifaceted work as an artist, filmmaker, storyteller, national speaker and social activist. He was one of the first American Indians to produce, write and direct films for and about Native people in the United States. He played the lead role in the feature motion picture, House Made of Dawn, based on N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. This film was archived by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and declared a "watershed moment in the history of Native filmmaking".

Littlebird began painting in 1959 as an art major at Oakland City College, in California. As a teenager and young man, he lived in northern California with his family off the reservation while his father worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area and being part of that art scene in the early 60's became the catalyst for his developing interest in the arts. One of his early works, a painting/collage titled, "Desert City", was selected as one of 55 out of 750 entries to exhibit in the Northern California Painters Exhibition at the Oakland Art Museum in 1961.

In the fall of 1961, Littlebird moved back to his beloved New Mexico homelands when he was awarded a full scholarship from the newly opened Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He became part of the first alumni of IAIA. Littlebird shares a colorful story of his arrival there, "We were given our own studio space filled with all the art supplies one could only dream about. I felt like I had arrived in heaven". He began to paint fervently day and night, beginning a prolific period as a painter well into the late 1970's. During this time, Littlebird painted from his Paguate Studio at Laguna Pueblo and later from his El Rito Studio in northern New Mexico. Many of his paintings from this period ended up in private collections in Santa Fe and around the U.S.

During the 1980's, Littlebird attended the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe. He served on the founding committee of Robert Redford's developing Sundance Institute and then attended Sundance as one of the first-year fellows. Littlebird began to explore film as "moving image art" and was fascinated with this medium as a way to tell his indigenous stories. He founded, Circle Film, a collaborative creative venture with Native American filmmakers and storytellers. In the mid-1990's, Littlebird began work on an evocative series of mythic paintings inspired by the book he was writing, Hunting Sacred, Everything Listens: A Pueblo Indian Man's Oral Tradition Legacy. Many of these pieces are in private collections, with several paintings held by the artist which are now (2014) being shown publicly for the first time alongside his new works.

Although always actively painting, Littlebird chose not to exhibit his work publicly for almost 15 years. During this period, together with his wife and partner, Deborah Littlebird, and while raising their two sons, they have been deeply engaged in regenerative work at the grassroots level for healing and restoring land, people and culture. In the summer of 2007, the Littlebirds were blessed to co-found HAMAATSA, an indigenous continuum learning center and demonstration farm located on 320 acres of environmentally protected aboriginal lands south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Littlebird shares, "Over time, as an artist, storyteller and filmmaker, it became clear to me that telling stories had to be connected to the land, and I found myself once again back on the land, hunting-gathering, farming, and sitting around a small fire, sharing stories at a place called, Hamaatsa". Hamaatsa is a Pueblo Indian word referring to a time arriving "now" within an indigenous experience.

Condition: 

The painting was never framed before and is in good pre-owned condition,

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