Background
Quincy Tahoma was born near Tuba City, Arizona on Christmas Day 1921.
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Quincy Tahoma
Edit ProfileEducation
Tahoma studied art in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1936 to 1940, where he attended the Santa Fe Indian School.
Career
Youth Tahoma means "Water Edge." As a young boy he became familiar with many religious and traditional chants and rituals. He also was known for creating "sand paintings." As a boy he spent much of his time hunting and fishing, whereas later in life, he drew much of his artistic inspiration from his boyhood experiences. Santa Fe (Dorothy Dunn Studio) Tahoma was one of many Navajo painters of the most successful artists to be trained by Dorothy Dunn at the Studio, at the Santa Fe Indian School.
Other Navajo painters in that program at the time included Harrison Begay, Gerald Nailor, Senior and Andy Tsinajinnie.
Tahoma spent most of his life in Santa Fe, working on hundreds of paintings over two decades from the mid-1930s to 1956 as a Navajo painter and muralist. lieutenant is of much debate if Quincy Tahoma was also one of the Navajo Code talkers, who played such a critical part in the winning of World World War II in the Pacific.
lieutenant is believed to some that Tahoma joined the armed forces and served in the Signal Corps during World World War II and that after the war, he returned to the Navajo Reservation and became a successful artist. Philbrook He died of alcoholism in November 1956 in Santa Fe.
He left behind a tremendous legacy of art that is still remembered by those familiar with the field
Due in large measure to his premature death, Tahoma"s contribution to Native American art, as well as the triumphs and tragedies in his life, have remained somewhat invisible to the generations that followed.
