Maria of Cochiti
1929
Allan Clark
Born Missoula, Montana, 1896; died Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1950
Clark sought a new modern art in unconventional subjects and materials. He had begun his career working for Seattle architect Carl Gould on sculptural bas reliefs for buildings on the University of Washington campus, but his travels in Asia inspired him to move beyond the aesthetic tenets of classical Greece and Rome and to explore other sculpture traditions. He came to love sculpting in wood, a technique that in America was typically associated only with craft traditions or with untutored artists. Clark settled in New Mexico in 1929 and began carving portrait heads of individuals he met among the Pueblo people there.This subject, Maria, was from the Cochiti Pueblo.
Pear wood
19 1/2 x 18 x 9 13/16 in. (49.5 x 45.7 x 25 cm)
Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection
33.882
Provenance: Possibly the artist, Santa Fe, New Mexico, by gift or commission to Richard Fuller, Seattle, by 1933
Photo: Paul Macapia