The human figure has always been central to the art of the American Southwest. Our figurative collection brings together paintings, prints, sculpture, and mixed media works in which people, their ceremonies, their daily lives, their relationships, and their connection to the land, are the primary subject. These are works of deep humanity, created by artists who understood that the figure is never just a form but always a carrier of culture and meaning.
Figurative art is work in which recognizable human or animal forms are the primary subject, as distinct from abstract or non-representational work. Within figurative art there is enormous range, from highly realistic rendering to stylized, symbolic, or expressionistic approaches that retain the figure while transforming it through the artist's vision. What unites all figurative work is the presence of the body as a vehicle for meaning, whether the subject is a portrait, a ceremonial dancer, a warrior, a mother and child, or a figure caught in a moment of everyday life.
In the Southwest, figurative art has a particularly rich history. Native American visual traditions have long placed the human and animal figure at the center of their imagery, whether in pottery decoration, hide painting, ledger drawings, or contemporary painting and sculpture. The figure in these traditions is rarely simply a likeness. It is a symbol, a story, a connection to ceremony and community that gives the image its depth and its power.
The figurative tradition in Southwest art stretches back thousands of years, from the petroglyphs and pictographs left by ancient peoples on canyon walls across the region to the sophisticated figurative painting that emerged in the twentieth century. The twentieth century saw a dramatic expansion of the figurative tradition, as Native American artists trained in both traditional and contemporary methods began producing paintings and sculptures that brought Indigenous subjects and perspectives to a national and international audience.
The influence of European figurative traditions, from academic realism to Expressionism and beyond, also shaped the work of artists in the Southwest, producing a rich interplay between cultural heritage and formal innovation.
Kevin Red Star, who grew up on the Crow Reservation and studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, has spent decades recording and celebrating Crow culture through figurative paintings of extraordinary vitality. Malcolm Furlow, of Choctaw descent, painted figures not as portraits of individuals but as statements about the human condition, using chromatic intensity to convey the emotional complexity of the Native American experience. Elias Rivera, who came to Santa Fe in 1982 after documenting urban life in New York, found in the native populations of New Mexico and later Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru a new subject for his bold, brightly colored figurative compositions that quickly earned him international recognition. Miguel Martinez, born and raised in Taos, is recognized worldwide for his modernist paintings of the faces of the women of the Southwest, whose mysterious and provocative expressions fill almost the entire canvas.
Collectors interested in the printmaking dimension of figurative work in the Southwest will find strong connections in our works on paper collection, which includes serigraphs, lithographs, and drawings in which the figure is a recurring subject. Those drawn to the sculptural representation of the human and animal form will also want to explore our sculpture collection. And for works that place the figure within the landscape of the Southwest, our landscape collection offers a broader view of how artists in the region have understood the relationship between people and place.