Walter Ufer
Luzanna (Lousuanna Lujan) and Her Sisters
1919
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, Unframed: 50 1/8 x 50 3/16 in. (127.3 x 127.5 cm) Framed: 56 3/4 x 56 7/8 x 4 1/8 in. (144.1 × 144.5 × 10.5 cm) Sight: 49 1/8 x 49 1/8 in. (124.8 x 124.8 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of the Friends of Art
Object Number
1931.5.1
In this sun-dappled interior scene, the double windows of a small home in Taos, New Mexico, frame a study in two cultures. Three girls from the Taos Pueblo Native community—Luzanna Lujan (1902–1979) and her two younger sisters—wear colorful shawls and alternately stare out at the viewer, rest in the window seat, and gaze
out the window to the landscape beyond. The window, patterned wallpaper, and window trimmings of the artist Walter Ufer’s home are all decidedly European in style. They seem to separate the three girls from the mountains of their ancestral homeland and the Pueblo
architecture visible across the town street. The large black ceramic wedding jar beside the girls, perhaps made by a member of their community, reflects the style and vast legacy of pottery production among the regional Pueblo cultures.
Denver Art Museum, "Drawn to the Southwest: The Paintings of Walter Ufer and E. Martin Hennings", December 13, 2015 - April 24, 2016, The Philbrook Museum of Art, May 29, 2016 - August 28, 2016.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014.
Benskin, Elizabeth, and Suzy Wolffe. Teacher's Guide to the American Collection. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014, pages 92 and 97.
ed. Thomas Brent Smith, "A Place in the Sun: The Southwest Paintings of Walter Ufer abd E. Martin Hennings." Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. ill. p. 66.
Porter, Dean A. "The Klauer Family of Dubuque, Iowa: A Story of Patronage." Self-published, 2019.
On View at the BMA
