The Martinezes as Artists and Subjects

North Carolina Museum of Art

One of the most fascinating relationships among objects featured in the NCMA’s latest exhibition, Knowing the West (on view through August 9, 2026), can be found in the show’s first thematic section, which questions whose stories about the West have been amplified and whose have been overlooked. A vessel by Maria and Julian Martinez, arguably the most famed Southwest Native potters of the 20th century, is displayed next to a portrait of the Martinezes and their son, speaking to the strength of the artistic ecosystem within and surrounding Santa Fe.

A black jar with black decorative designs surrounding the opening.
Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), 1887-1980, Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), 1885-1943, Jar, circa 1930, Collection of the School for Advanced Research, IAF.2562, Gift of Amelia Elizabeth White, 1955, Photograph by Addison Doty

The Martinezes’ distinct blackware aesthetic, exemplified by Jar, came about as a result of the artists’ collaboration with Edgar Lee Hewett, an American archaeologist and anthropologist who helped stimulate the 20th-century revival of pottery in the Southwest. Hewett approached the Martinezes with the job of re-creating black-on-white ceramic sherds found at excavation sites, hoping to exhibit the facsimiles. This task led the Martinezes to experiment with black-on-black works, departing from the traditional multicolored designs of Pueblo pottery and garnering global recognition.

A black-and-white photograph of a man with short hair posing in a graduation gown. Underneath the gown, he wears a vest, dress shirt, and bowtie. He holds a graduation cap with his left hand.
Edgar Lee Hewett as the first president of New Mexico Normal University (now New Mexico Highlands University), 1898
A black-and-white photo of a man agitating a smoking pile of ash with a poker. In the foreground there are steel pales and glistening works of pottery resting on the ground. A woman stands and watches the man work.
Maria and Julian Martinez pit firing blackware pottery at P’ohwhóge Owingeh (San Ildefonso Pueblo), New Mexico, circa 1920

Outlined in Mindy N. Besaw and Jami C. Powell’s essay “It’s Complicated! Cultural Entanglements and Intersections in Art of the West” in the exhibition catalogue, Maria Martinez’s work has been ascribed with a form of “soft power” by scholars like Lea S. McChesney. This phrase, often associated with diplomacy, is used by McChesney to describe the “means by which women’s pottery making transforms the world according to specific cultural beliefs and aesthetics … its beauty of form, design, and chromatic features; and the ways that pots transform the spaces they enter … to forge new relationships.” The mutual artistic inspiration and communal solidarity born of Martinez’s pottery is embodied by the countless artists of various media who worked alongside her, including Olive Rush.

A black and white portrait of a woman with her hair up wearing a high-collared dress with a floral design.
A portrait of Olive Rush from a 1912 publication
Oil painting of two figures with long, dark hair and medium skin tones seated on a curb in front of a brick and adobe wall. The figure on the right holds a medium-skin-toned child in their arms.
Olive Rush, Maria and Julian, 1914, oil on academy board, 12 1/4 × 18 1/2 in., Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; Image: James Hart Photography

Rush, whose family had roots in North Carolina, moved to the West in 1920 after working as a commercial artist and training at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Students League in New York. She painted Maria and Julian on a visit to Santa Fe in 1914. The painting depicts the Martinezes resting with their son outside of the Palace of the Governors, the first territorial capital of New Mexico and a hub of arts commerce in the region. Pueblo artists continue to exhibit their work in and around the palace today.

A black-and-white photograph of a one story adobe building with a long covered patio.
A front view of the Palace of the Governors captured by M. James Slack in 1934 while surveying historic American buildings

Together, Jar and Maria and Julian acknowledge the timeless influence of the Martinezes and represent what Besaw and Powell refer to as “the interconnectedness of art and life in Santa Fe,” a city where “artists, people from the Pueblos and other Native communities, and tourists intermixed, exchanged ideas, and influenced one another.”

An oil painting of two figures sitting on a curb hangs in a gold frame next to a piece of blackware pottery encased in a glass display.
Jar and Maria and Julian displayed side by side in the galleries of Knowing the West

We invite you to visit Knowing the West and experience the interplay of these two works in person. You’re sure to discover a host of compelling stories that speak to the region’s rich cultural landscape and history of artistic innovation.

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