Studio style

also: Flatstyle

style c. 1932-1962 New Mexico United States

The Studio style is the painting style taught at The Studio, the art program Dorothy Dunn opened at the Santa Fe Indian School on 9 September 1932. Dunn taught only basic drawing and colour, deliberately leaving out life drawing and perspective, and her students - from the Rio Grande pueblos, the Navajo Nation and Plains communities - turned ceremonial, mythological and everyday subjects into a distinctive flat figuration. Geronima Cruz Montoya, a graduate of the first class, directed the program from 1937 until the Studio closed in 1962 with the founding of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Often called Flatstyle, the look dominates mid-century Native painting and remains influential, even as later artists like Oscar Howe pushed against its conventions.

Example work related to "Studio style".
Example work related to "Studio style".Public domain · source

Defining characteristics

  • Heavily outlined flat fields of opaque colour, without shading or modelled volume
  • Minimal backgrounds: no ground line, no perspective, no cast shadows
  • Narrative scenes of ceremony, dance, mythology and everyday Indigenous life
  • Decorative precision in costume detail - blankets, beadwork and feathers rendered as pattern
  • Isolated frontal or profile figures vignetted across the picture plane
  • Opaque watercolour or casein on paper and board

Key figures

  • Dorothy Dunn (1903-1992) — Chicago-trained teacher who founded The Studio in 1932 and defined its flat illustrative style
  • Gerónima Cruz Montoya (1915-2015) — Ohkay Owingeh painter who directed the Studio from 1937 to 1962, its first Native American teacher
  • Pablita Velarde (1918-2006) — Santa Clara painter of casein tableaux of Pueblo life such as Basketmaking (c. 1940)
  • Beatien Yazz (1929-2021) — Navajo painter of animals and people in colorful Flatstyle with minimal backgrounds

Example works

  • Basketmaking — Pablita Velarde (c. 1940)
  • Paint the Wind — Beatien Yazz (illustrations) (1958)

Sources

← Back to the catalog