The Story of the Santo Niño of Chimayó
FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY AND A HALF, a diminutive Christ Child has been the focus of prayers from visitors to the small village nestled between the Río Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. His…
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Tag: Santero
Gustave Baumann’s Art Lives On
FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, artist Gustave Baumann tried to get his passion project, Little Saints of New Mexico, published. But a circuitous route full of obstacles prevented his artistic homage to the…
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New Mexico Santos: May 1935
THE INTEREST WHICH has developed in the study of early New Mexican religious art as represented by santos is shown by their scarcity within late years. Some twenty years ago when I first became…
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New Mexico Santos: April 1935
LUMMIS HAS REFERRED TO NEW MEXICO as “The Land of Poco Tiempo .” It might well be termed, “The Land of Santos .” Whenever and wherever the Spaniard established a set tlement, invariably he placed it…
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New Mexico Santos: March 1935
TIME NEVER LIES HEAVY on the mind of the man or woman who has a hobby. This is an old and familiar adage, the truth of which I can vouch for from my own experience. As a boy, I collected stamps…
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Self-Portrait in a Complex Mirror
VICENTE TELLES CAREFULLY rolls open a storage cabinet, revealing a retablo of Our Lady of Guadalupe that’s more than 200 years old. “Pedro Antonio Fresquís, he’s the one known as the first native New…
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From Hard Times to Holy Roller
NICHOLAS HERRERA didn’t grow up in the small northern New Mexico community of El Rito intending to be an artist. But to say that art became his calling is an understatement. After a near-fatal car…
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Carving Out Legacies
ONCE THERE WAS A FATHER FROM MEXICO, a skilled curandero who could find powerful medicine in the most barren deserts. He moved to Arizona with his wife in the first few years of the 20th century, but…
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Master Santeros Save the Sacred
MASTER SANTERO FÉLIX LÓPEZ calls the artworks at San Antonio de Padua Church, in Córdova, where his great-grandparents are buried, “a door to the sacred.” St. Anthony’s, as it’s casually known in the…
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Luis Tapia Carves A New Path
JUDGING BY THE MAN'S DROOPED HEAD and slumped shoulders, the bottle of tequila on the table dealt a knockout blow. Carved from wood, in the style of a Spanish colonial bulto, the figure hardly seems a…
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