The statement “It’s Your Art” is meant to emphasize that the Roswell Museum’s collection is your collection. Despite the museum’s closure due to the October 2024 flood, staff continue to work behind the scenes on care for and conservation of collection objects. Last month, this column focused on Dana Newmann’s mixed media artwork Deco III. This month features artwork by Beatien Yazz.

Yazz was born in 1928 near Wide Ruins, AZ to his parents Joe and Desbah. As noted by an unidentified author for Bischoff’s Gallery, Beatien translates to “Little No Shirt” in the Diné language. Diné is the correct term for referring to the Indigenous group labeled Navajo as Diné is how the tribe refers to itself, the term translating to “The People.” Yazz grew up with his three siblings who lost their mother to tuberculosis in 1937.

Yazz matriculated at Wide Ruins Day School for his early studies and he showed great promise as an artist when he was quite young. He exhibited his art when he was just 10 years old at a museum in Illinois. At 12 years old he sold his first artwork and at the age of 13 he had his first solo exhibition in California. He netted $11 for the sale of 20 paintings and his solo show earned praise in the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union newspapers.

At 14 years old, Yazz applied to attend the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) in New Mexico as “Jimmy Toddy,” an anglicized name he went by. He specifically requested “special training in artwork” on his application and noted the trades of painting and silverwork as his career aspirations. His response to the question about whether or not he could pay tuition was simply “Doubtful”. SFIS, founded in 1890, is a boarding school affiliated with the US government’s Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). Yazz studied there for two years where he received mediocre grades in every subject except for art, which he aced.

Cody White of the National Archives in Denver noted in 2017 that the prominent photographer Ansel Adams saw Yazz’s artwork in 1944 and was so impressed he wrote to the Office of Education at the US Department of Indian Affairs in 1947. White quotes Adams as writing, “Passing through the Navajo Reservation… I had the pleasure of seeing some of the paintings… He is a young Navajo of considerable talent and great promise. I was… depressed with that particular phase of his work which reflected the instruction he received in art at the Santa Fe Indian School. This art instruction seemed to emphasize a conventional approach to ‘Indian’ style and to impose a sterile quality upon an otherwise free and natural spirit.”

White indicated Yazz “lied about his age, saying he was born in 1927… [he] was in the 1^st Recruit Battalion at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego… he received an honorable discharge October 13, 1946 [at 18 years old].” Nancy Sortore wrote in the Arizona Daily Star in 1975 that Yazz served in the communications division of the Marines where he traveled throughout the Pacific Ocean and also visited China. During World War II, the artist was one of the famed Code Talkers, a group of marines who used the Diné language to confuse the Japanese. After his military service, Yazz resumed his studies. As part of a summer program, Yazz was mentored by Japanese artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Yazz’s story and artworks were included in two books by Alberta Pierson Hannum. Spin a Silver Dollar: The Story of a Desert Trading Post was published in 1945 and Paint the Wind was published in 1958. White wrote that “Hannum insisted on 15% commission from the book for the young man as well as another 15% for the Lippincotts [who ran the trading post in Wide Ruins and knew Yazz well] but a problem soon arose; where was Yazz to sign the agreement?” In 1945, Sallie Lippincott wrote in a letter to the Navajo Service Superintendent, “A number of the other Indians at Wide Ruins enter into the book of course but Jimmy is one of the main characters and his paintings are to be used as illustrations. If there is a regulation about using the names of reservation Indians or about publishing their photographs or paintings please send me a copy of the ruling so that we may cooperate.”

Yazz ended up getting married to his wife Ruby and having 12 children. Three of his children followed in their father’s footsteps and became artists. The unknown author wrote for Bischoff’s Gallery that Ruby was also an artist, weaving “textiles using natural fibers and vegetal dyes.” Sotore described Yazz as “shy and doesn’t talk much.” Jeanne Snodgrass King wrote in American Indian Painters: A Biographical Directory in 1968 that “Yazz worked for a time as a police officer in Fort Defiance, Arizona and as an art teacher at Steward Indian School in Carson City, Nevada.”

Writing for Warner Music Group in 2021, Martin Chilton wrote that “Probably his most famous painting was an untitled one that art director Gary Burden found at a yard sale for 25 cents and later used for the front sleeve of The Eagles’ 1974 album ‘On the Border’.” In addition to the two by Hannum, other books were written about Yazz, including Yazz: Navajo Painter, a biography written by JJ Brody and Sallie Wagner. It was published in 1983 by Northland Press in collaboration with the School of American Research in Santa Fe. Only 100 copies were made and each included an original artwork by Yazz.

As noted in the World Biographical Encyclopedia, by the 1970s “Yazz suffered from severe eye problems. The medical doctors had not been able to determine what the problem was. A Navajo Medicine Man said it was because he once painted the Navajo sacred Yeibichai. To be cured, Yazz must undergo a purifying ceremony performed by the Medicine Man. This is very expensive and Yazz was never able to afford it.” Yazz died in 2021 at the age of 92.

The untitled painting shared here from the Roswell Museum’s collection is a landscape depicting a hill, snow, birds, and an abstract representation of the sun either rising or setting. Yazz created this in 1979 and it was donated to the museum in 1985 by Lillian and Betty Harvey. To paint it, Yazz used gouache, similar to watercolor, but thicker and opaque. This enables the snow depicted to be distinct from the background whereas white watercolor would appear mostly transparent. This painting was last displayed in the Roswell Museum’s 2022 exhibition Decades: The 1970s and it was, thankfully, not directly impacted by the flood waters in October 2024.

Please stay tuned for more from the Roswell Museum. We appreciate the outpouring of support from the community during our closure. And remember, “It’s Your Art.”