Diego Romero

Diego Romero (born 1964) is an American Cochiti Pueblo visual artist. He is known for ceramics and pottery, and lives in New Mexico.

Background Diego Romero was born in Berkeley, California in 1964. His father is Santiago Romero, a Cochiti Pueblo Indian, and his mother is Nellie Guth, a European-American born and raised in Berkeley. Diego was also raised in Berkeley, California, and spent his childhood summers with his paternal grandparents at the pueblo in Cochiti, New Mexico.

Art career Raised in Berkeley, California, Diego Romero is a third-generation Cochiti Pueblo artist who specializes in pottery (he also does printmaking). One of his collaborators in pottery was Navajo–Hopi ceramicist Nathan Begaye (1958–2010). He draws on prehistoric Ancestral Pueblo and Mimbres ceramics, Greek vessels, and pop culture. Romero's narratives combine humor and often-biting social commentary that communicate messages about contemporary Native American life, including difficult issues related to Native politics, history, identity, war, and alcoholism.

In the 1990s, Romero catapulted to notoriety in the American Southwest ceramics world with his "Chongo Brothers" polychromed earthenware series. A chongo is a Southwest Native man who wears his hair in a traditional bun. Cartier Foundation, Paris, France Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC: She-Wana's Dream, 2008 National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA