About the Exhibit

According to Fonseca, his artist journey began when, at age 25 in 1971, his Maidu uncle Henry Azbill took him to an earth renewal ceremony. He said, “I was overwhelmed that my Maidu heritage and the heritage from northern California was still going on…” Fonseca learned traditional dance and, through a class on Native American art, began to paint Maidu dancers. Azbill gave Fonseca his version of the Maidu creation story, which he painted throughout the 1970s.

Among the dancers Fonseca depicted was the spirit representative of the powerful Coyote figure. By 1982, Fonseca’s Coyote had “left the Rez” and began to appear as a suave, savvy trickster who, over the years, assumed various colorful guises. Fonseca said his Coyote character was a filter through which he examined his vision of the artist, the Indian and society. Fonseca’s Coyote paintings, done primarily when he was living in New Mexico, became a popular figure emblematic of the Santa Fe scene.

In 1985, Fonseca returned to California and revisited the themes of petroglyphs that became his “Stone Poem” series. He had done some work in the late 1970s with petroglyphs, but this time the images were on large unstretched canvases that reflected the sense of freedom and space that was part of petroglyph sites. Fonseca returned to New Mexico in 1990, but he continued with California themes throughout the 1990s, exploring the impact of the mission period and the gold rush on California Indians. He also celebrated design in traditional art from other cultures, such as Navajo blankets, but done with a bold, rapidly painted process that instilled tremendous energy into his painting.

Acclaim for Fonseca included single artist exhibits and international travel that inspired new themes for his art and fresh approaches to earlier ideas. In 2005, the last year of his life, he was selected for the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship. Fonseca’s journey as an artist was too short, but it was full of courage to try new ideas that is the mark of a true artist.