Joe Herrera

Early life and education

Joe Hilario Herrera was born on May 17, 1921, in Cochiti, New Mexico. His father Felipe Herrera, was from Cochiti, where he grew up. While his mother, Tonita Peña was from San Ildefonso. Herrera inherited rich artistic traditions from both of his parents. His early interest in painting was stimulated by watching his mother's husband, Julian Martinez paint, but above all through the strong influence of his mother, who was the most prominent Native American female painter of her generation. Herrera swatted flies away from his mother's paint dishes while she worked, and in return she gave him paint with which he began to experiment at the age of five. He also worked at the Laboratory of Anthropology. He completed a bachelor's degree in art education at the University of New Mexico, on the G.I. Bill.

However, he was one of the first Studio School-trained Native American artists to move away from representational art into more abstract expression.

Of his own work, Herrera said:

Herrera's work has been described as "coolly decorative", in contrast with his mother's "warmly natural" art.

Politics, civil service, and late paintings From 1953 to 1967, Herrera served as secretary on the All Indian Pueblo Council, before they had an office. the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Gilcrease Museum; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the National Museum of the American Indian; the Museum of Northern Arizona; among others.

In 2018, his art was featured alongside his mother's in the exhibition "Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera" (2018) at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma.

Herrera's work was part of Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–2021), a survey at the National Museum of the American Indian, and George Gustav Heye Center.