Ingmars Lindbergs
Director
Lot 14
A Charlie Willeto wood sculpture
9 December 2025, 12:00 PST
Los AngelesUS$2,000 - US$3,000
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Kim Jarand
Specialist, Head of Sale
Charlie Willeto
Diné (Navajo), (1897-1964), untitled, repurposed lumber and pigmented sculpture, carved to depict a figure with upraised arms, the form densely decorated front and back with polka dots.
height 22in, width 4 3/8in
height 22in, width 4 3/8in
Footnotes
Provenance
John C. Hill Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
The Stanley Miller Collection of Native American Art, acquired from the above circa 1999
From 1961 until his death in 1964, Charlie Willeto carved approximately four hundred figures from cottonwood, pine and recycled materials, most ranging in size from twelve to thirty inches.
See Smither, John & Stephanie, et. al., Collective Willeto: The Visionary Carvings of a Navajo Artist, 2002, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, with an accompanying essay by Lee Kogan, curator emerita at the American Folk Art Museum; An Ordered Universe: The Art of Willeto:
"Charlie Willeto's carvings share with the work of twentieth-century self-taught artist-superstars William Edmonson, Bill Traylor, and Martin Ramirez a brilliant economy of expression and iconic power, vitality and energy, a timelessness, and inspiration drawn from deep cultural roots simultaneously personal and universal. Like these artists, Willeto also developed a vocabulary of form and had an extraordinary command of his media. There are additional shared similarities. All began art-making after the age of fifty and their entire oeuvre, as we know it, was created within a few years." Ibid. p.13