Indian Court Federal Building / Pueblo Turtle Dancers - after Chiuh Tah (Vicente Mirabal)

Louis Bassi Siegriest

Poster design for the "Indian division" of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, this from before the addition of the poster text. This poster was designed after a painting by Tewa/Taos Pueblo artist Vicente Mirabal, also known as Chiuh-tah. Chiuh-tah, born between 1917 and 1918, had been a student of Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School. He won a poster contest in San Francisco with the "Pueblo Turtle Dancers" design, and was establishing a career as an artist and art teacher in Santa Fe when he was drafted into the Second World War. Stationed in Germany, he died in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. As with many indigenous American artists of the time, records of his life and works are scarce, and the formal spelling of his name has become lost with time. Variant spellings include "Vicente" and "Vincent", and "Mirabel" and "Mirabell".

Louis Bassi Siegriest had been employed by the silkscreen department of the San Francisco Federal Art Project, a division of WPA. As preparations for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition ramped up, he was approached by Rene D'Harnoncourt, head of the "Indian division" of the exposition, which focused on the works and cultures of American Indian tribespeople. D'Harnoncourt offered him a position as the director of the division's poster department, overseeing the design and production of screenprinted posters that reflected the Indian Division's mission.