Julián Martínez, also known as Pocano (1879–1943), was a

San Ildefonso Pueblo San Ildefonso Pueblo (Tewa: Pʼohwhogeh Ówîngeh ’òhxʷógè ʔówîŋgè"where the water cuts through" ) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States, and a federally recognized tribe, established c. 13 ...

potter A potter is someone who makes pottery. Potter may also refer to: Places United States *Potter, originally a section on the Alaska Railroad, currently a neighborhood of Anchorage, Alaska, US * Potter, Arkansas *Potter, Nebraska * Potters, New Je ...

,"Julian Martinez."
''Smithsonian American Art Museum''. Retrieved 7 April 2012. painter, and the patriarch of a family of Native American ceramic artists in the United States.

Background

Martínez was born in 1879 in

, New Mexico. His name, Pocano, means "Coming of the Spirits" in

Tewa The Tewa are a linguistic group of Pueblo Native Americans who speak the Tewa language and share the Pueblo culture. Their homelands are on or near the Rio Grande in New Mexico north of Santa Fe. They comprise the following communities: * ...

. He worked as a farmer, general laborer, and janitor, in addition to being an artist. He was elected governor of San Ildefonso.Lester 344 Martínez married matriarch potter

Maria Martinez Maria Montoya Martinez (1887, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico – July 20, 1980, San Ildefonso Pueblo) was a Native American artist who created internationally known pottery. Martinez (born Maria Poveka Montoya), her husband Julian, and o ...

, and together they had a son Popovi Da, who also potter.Lester 343 Maria is considered the preeminent creator of San Ildefonso blackware pottery; however Julian contributed to her accomplishments. Their son Popovi Da continued innovating Pueblo ceramic arts; his work has been widely exhibited and collected. Martinez died on March 6, 1943, in San Ildefonso Pueblo.

Work

The Martinez family was instrumental in reviving the San Ildefonso and creating the San Ildefonso black-on-black, matte-on-shiny pottery technique. The Martínez family is credited for inventing a technique that would allow for areas of the pottery to have a matte finish and other areas to be a glossy jet black. Martínez, with help from anthropologist,

Edgar Lee Hewett Edgar Lee Hewett (November 23, 1865 – December 31, 1946) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist whose focus was the Native American communities of New Mexico and the southwestern United States. He is best known for his role in ...

researched historical designs and reproduced them on the pottery, later modifying classical Pueblo designs to create his own. Martínez was also an easel painter. He painted scenes of

Pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

rituals as well as abstract designs with colored pencil and watercolor, and featured Western figurative types against blank backgrounds. He painted murals at the former

Santa Fe Indian School The Federal Government established the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) in 1890 to educate Native American children from tribes throughout the Southwestern United States. The purpose of creating SFIS was an attempt to assimilate the Native American c ...

in Santa Fe, New Mexico and

Mesa Verde National Park Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Established ...

in Colorado. Martínez was part of an art movement called the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, which included such noted artists as Alfonso Roybal, Tonita Peña, Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pi), Crecencio Martinez, and Encarnación Peña.

Public collections

The artwork of Maria and Julian Martinez can be found in the following public collections. * American Museum of Natural History, New York *

Amerind Foundation The Amerind Foundation is a museum and research facility dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Native American cultures and their histories. Its facilities are located near the village of Dragoon in Cochise County, Arizona, about 6 ...

, Dragoon, Arizona *

Amon Carter Museum of Art Amon may refer to: Mythology * Amun, an Ancient Egyptian deity, also known as Amon and Amon-Ra * Aamon, a Goetic demon People Momonym * Amon of Judah ( 664– 640 BC), king of Judah Given name * Amon G. Carter (1879–1955), American pu ...

, Fort Worth, Texas *

Arizona State Museum The Arizona State Museum (ASM), founded in 1893, was originally a repository for the collection and protection of archaeological resources. Today, however, ASM stores artifacts, exhibits them and provides education and research opportunities. It ...

, Tucson *

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

, Ohio *

Cleveland Museum of Fine Arts The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

, Ohio *

Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (its name until 1978), it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio. The museum collect ...

, Ohio *

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, Hanover, New Hampshire *

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between ...

, Colorado *

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Overview The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum c ...

, Norman, Oklahoma *

Gilcrease Museum Gilcrease Museum, also known as the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, is a museum northwest of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma housing the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, as well as a gro ...

, Tulsa, Oklahoma *

Joslyn Art Museum The Joslyn Art Museum is the principal fine arts museum in the state of Nebraska, United States. Located in Omaha, it was opened in 1931 at the initiative of Sarah H. Joslyn in memory of her husband, businessman George A. Joslyn. It is the only m ...

, Omaha, Nebraska *

Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum The McNay Art Museum, founded in 1954 in San Antonio, is the first modern art museum in the U.S. state of Texas. The museum was created by Marion Koogler McNay's original bequest of most of her fortune, her important art collection and her 24-ro ...

, San Antonio, Texas *

Millicent Rogers Museum The Millicent Rogers Museum is an art museum in Taos, New Mexico, founded in 1956 by the family of Millicent Rogers. Initially the artworks were from the multi-cultural collections of Millicent Rogers and her mother, Mary B. Rogers, who donated ...

, Taos, New Mexico *

Montclair Art Museum The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) is located in Montclair, New Jersey, United States, a few miles west of New York City. Since it opened in 1914 as the first museum in New Jersey that granted access to the public and the first dedicated solely to a ...

, Montclair, New Jersey *

Minneapolis Institute of Arts The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United Stat ...

, Minnesota *

Museum of New Mexico The Museum of New Mexico is a collection of museums, historic sites, and archaeological services governed by the State of New Mexico. It currently consists of six divisions : the Palace of the Governors state history museum, the New Mexico Museum o ...

, Santa Fe *

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...

, Katherine Harvey Collection, Flagstaff *

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

George Gustav Heye Center The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...

, New York *

, Washington, D.C. *

Newark Museum The Newark Museum of Art (formerly known as the Newark Museum), in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States, is the state's largest museum. It holds major collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, A ...

, Newark, NJ * Owensboro Museum of Fine Arts, Owensboro, Kentucky *

Philbrook Museum of Art Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum with expansive formal gardens located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum, which opened in 1939, is located in a former 1920s villa, "Villa Philbrook", the home of Oklahoma oil pioneer Waite Phillips and his ...

, Tulsa, Oklahoma *

Riverside Museum The Riverside Museum (formerly known as the Glasgow Museum of Transport) is a museum in Glasgow, housed in a building at Pointhouse Quay in the Glasgow Harbour regeneration district of Glasgow, Scotland. The building opened in June 2011, winnin ...

, New York *

School for Advanced Research The School for Advanced Research (SAR), until 2007 known as the School of American Research and founded in 1907 as the School for American Archaeology (SAA), is an advanced research center located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Since 1967, the s ...

, Santa Fe, New Mexico *

Smithsonian Museum of American Art The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...

, Washington, D.C. *

Southwest Museum of the American Indian The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...

, Los Angeles *

University of Pennsylvania Museum The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...

, Philadelphia *

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medici ...

, Santa Fe, New Mexico

References

Notes

*Lester, Patrick D. ''The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters.'' Tulsa, OK: SIR Publications, 1995. . * Crawford, Virginia. "American Indian Painting." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 1 (1982): 3-17.

External links

Julian Martinez art
National Museum of the American Indian
Julian Martinez art
Smithsonian American Art Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Martinez, Julian 1879 births 1943 deaths Artists from New Mexico Native American painters Native American potters Painters from New Mexico Pueblo artists 20th-century American painters American male painters People from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico 20th-century ceramists Native American male artists 20th-century Native Americans 20th-century American male artists

Background

Work

Public collections

See also

References

Notes

External links