Peter Miller: Coming Home October 1 – November 15, 2021
The artist Peter Miller was born Henrietta Myers. She changed her name to Peter shortly after concluding her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1934, believing that she would be treated more fairly if the public thought her work was created by a man rather than a woman. Miller is today classified as an American Surrealist, a reputation that she earned for having shown in the early 1940s at the prestigious gallery of Julien Levy in New York, then considered the premiere showcase for Surrealist painting in the United States. Despite this affiliation, her worked shared little in common with the dream and fantasy world of European Surrealists, although reviewers of her exhibitions at the Julien Levy Gallery noted the unmistakable influence of the artists Joan Miró and Paul Klee. These same reviewers observed that she was also influenced by sources in Native American art and culture, which today we know came from the fact that she divided her time between homes in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. She first came to Santa Fe as a child, but after her marriage in 1935 to Earle C. Miller, a fellow student at the Academy, she and her husband built a ranch in Española, about 25 miles north of Santa Fe (they purchased 85 acres, which allowed them to lease an additional five thousand acres from the Bureau of Land Management). From that point onward, they considered New Mexico their spiritual home. They were neighbors of the indigenous people of the Tewa Pueblo, whose crafts and religious beliefs fascinated her. The reliance of Native Americans upon the land and the animals who occupied it permeated her work for the remaining years of her career. Just as they believed that the creatures who surrounded them—birds, turtles, lizards, snakes—could serve as intermediaries in their communication with the gods of the underworld, Miller appropriated these same symbols in her paintings, along with abstract signs that she extrapolated from their pottery and petroglyphs. Historically, the two most important paintings included in the present exhibition are Miller’s Five Ceremonial Dancers and Three Spirits, paintings that were both likely shown in her exhibitions at the Julien Levy Gallery. Stylistically, reviewers of these shows noticed their reliance upon the works of Miró, Klee and Picasso, but they also saw that their subjects were drawn from sources in Native American art and culture. This rapport existed because of Miller’s intimate familiarity with the customs, rituals and ceremonies of the Tewa, to which she was given unique access through of her friendship with Tilano Montoya, a Native American from the San Ildefonso Pueblo who was the companion of the writer Mary Warner, one of Peter Miller’s closest friends living in New Mexico at the time. Until recently, Peter Miller has been a forgotten figure within the history of American modernism, a lacuna this exhibition and the book published as its accompanying catalogue, hope to rectify. This exposure will draw her paintings to the attention of a whole new generation of critics, curators, historians, and collectors, finally giving her the recognition and critical acclaim she and her work rightly deserve.
Cover: Woman with Birds, 1940s, oil on canvas, 25 x 30 inches, private collection, Santa Fe, NM
Five Ceremonial Dancers c 1940 Oil on canvas 38 x 50 inches $85,000
Toro Bravo 1940s Oil on canvas 30 x 25 inches $40,000
The Sidewise Enchantment 1930s Oil on canvas 29 x 24 inches $25,000
Three Spirits 1940s Oil on canvas 38 x 50 inches $85,000
Pueblo
1930s Oil on canvas 16-3/4 x 25-5/8 inches $20,000
The Alchemist Flask 1975 Oil on canvas 50 x 24-1/4 inches $35,000
Two Figures 1930s Oil on canvas 45 x 30 inches $50,000
Two Figures 1940s Oil on canvas 8 x 10 inches $10,000
The Sunflower 1940s Oil on canvas 20-1/8 x 28 inches SOLD
Pink Figures
1930s Oil on canvas 36 x 28-1/2 inches $30,000
Turtle and Soul 1930s Oil on canvas 45 x 30 inches $45,000
Figure
1950s Oil on canvas 65 x 45 inches SOLD
Flower Spirit
1940s Oil on canvas 30-1/8 x 20-1/8 inches $25,000
Midsummer Night 1939 Oil on canvas 14 x 18 inches $20,000
Magic Woman 1930s Oil on canvas 20 x 29-1/4 inches $25,000
Woman with Birds 1940s Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches SOLD
Turtle Ceremony 1940s Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches $30,000
Story of the Hunt 1940s Oil on canvas 30 x 40 inches $45,000
Battle Scene
1930s Oil on canvas 40-1/8 x 30-1/8 inches $45,000
Enchantment
1970s Oil on canvas 28-1/8 x 22 inches $25,000
Soul Speak
1930s Oil on canvas 18 x 24-1/8 inches $20,000
The Afterlife 1930s Oil on canvas 16 x 22 inches $25,000
Triothi
1960s Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches $20,000
The Whisperers 1940s Oil on canvas 12 x 16 inches $15,000
King
1930s Oil on canvas 30 x 10 inches $20,000
Life Force
1930s Oil on canvas 20 x 30 inches $25,000
Turtle Petroglyph 1930s Oil on canvas 25 x 34-1/4 inches $25,000
Three Tewa Gods 1940s Oil on canvas 11 x 20-1/8 inches SOLD
Moonlight Wisdom 1960s Oil on canvas 22-1/8 x 22-1/8 inches $20,000
Feathers and Vessels 1950s Oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches $30,000