Dorothy Stewart and Ernie O’Malley
Santa Fe’s 1930s Residents -- An Artist and A Poet
January 21, 2020, 3pm
545 Canyon Road, Suite 2, Santa Fe
RSVP & Reservations required for lecture
Historic Santa Fe Foundation presents a lecture by Cormac O'Malley on the relationship with his father Ernie O'Malley and Dorothy Stewart, artist and sister to HSFF's El Zaguán former owner Margretta Dietrich. The talk is scheduled for Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 3pm in the sala of HSFF offices located at 545 Canyon Road, Suite 2, Santa Fe. There is no admission for the talk, but due to limited seating reservations are required.
Dorothy Stewart, the artist, arrived in Santa Fe in the mid-1920s. Ernie O’Malley, the poet and author, arrived in Santa Fe from Taos in early 1930. Stewart and O'Malley met in the literary and artistic circles in Santa Fe and became friends. He lectured there on Irish literature and history.
In late 1930 when Stewart wanted to return to Mexico to continue her series of Mexican print works, she asked O’Malley to escort her as the driver of her car. He was anxious to see what was happening in Mexico in terms of how indigenous art and influences were being incorporated into Post-Mexican Revolution art. Another New York artist, Theodora Goddard, then living in Santa Fe joined the troop as she was also particularly interested in the political side of the revolution and its political art.
When they returned to Santa Fe after eight months of travel in Mexico, Stewart asked O’Malley to help her publish a book of her prints covering New Mexico and old Mexico with his writing and her prints. For various reasons the book never got published but O'Malley retained the prints which he had received from Stewart and hung some of them in his homes in Ireland where he returned in 1935.
O'Malley and Stewart had a deep and abiding interest in folklore and folkways in New Mexico and Mexico and elsewhere. Her art and his poems reflect on the life and attitudes in rural New Mexico of the time, and capture the spirit of those days, and indeed speak to us today.