A CENTURY OF RETABLOS: The Janis and Dennis Lyon Collection of New Mexican Santos, 1780–1880

A rich tradition of religious painting flourished in New Mexico in the Spanish Colonial period prior to statehood in 1912. In the 18th and 19th centuries, self-taught painters in the villages of present-day New Mexico established workshops to produce devotional images called retablos. These colorful narrative panels consisted of images of Christian saints painted on wood, earning for their makers the title of santeros or saint makers. These small paintings were sold to devout believers who displayed them in home altars to honor their patron saints.

Introduced to the New World by the Spanish in the late 1700s as a means of converting the Indian population, retablos spread throughout Mexico and the Southwest. Small retablo factories were established with a hierarchy of trained and untrained artists who worked to produce and reproduce the same images, some subjects more prolifically than others. The santeros painted primarily with materials derived from nature, mixing their own pigments from local clays, minerals, carbon soot, plants, barks, roots, and flowers, which they then applied with homemade brushes to roughly cut wood panels. The exhibition features 94 wooden panels from the Janis and Dennis Lyon Collection, one of the finest private collections of retablos in the world. On view to the public for the first time, the Lyon collection encompasses the breadth and depth of the retablo tradition in the Spanish colonial period from 1780 to 1880.

A Century of Retablos is organized by Phoenix Art Museum. The exhibition has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.

The Laguna Santero, Our Lady of Guadalupe (detail), natural pigments on wood panel, Collection of Dennis and Janis Lyon

The Laguna Santero, Saint Joseph (detail), natural pigments on wood panel, Collection of Dennis and Janis Lyon

The Christmas Santero, Saint Michael the Archangel (detail), natural pigments on wood panel, Collection of Dennis and Janis Lyon