Mary Sully (1896–1963), a Dakota artist and designer, created stunning “personality prints”—vivid, intricate triptychs blending Native aesthetics, modernist abstraction, and pop culture. Overlooked in her time, her work bridges Indigenous traditions with early 20th-century avant-garde movements, offering a complex, layered view of American history, identity, and art.
#MarySully #DakotaArt #IndigenousModernism #PersonalityPrints #HiddenHistories #NativeAmericanArt #WomenInArt
Class trip to #MetMusuem
These are new to me
"Personality Prints" from
Lakota artist Mary Sully
1930s -1940s
"Nearly lost, Mary Sully’s discovered drawings riff on Modernist geometries and Dakota Sioux beadwork & quilting."
When she died in Omaha, Neb., in 1963, at age 67, her primary output of around 200 color-pencil-&-ink drawings lay hidden in a cardboard box kept by her older sister, w/ whom she had lived most of her adult life
In 2006, the drawings…came to the attention of Sully’s great-nephew, a history professor at Harvard
A Gift Of Fire
CLM
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