Burning Man

Christian Waguespack Exhibitions, Magazine

Fig. 1. Self Portrait by William Shuster (1893–1969), 1931. Signed and dated “Self Portrait, 1931/ WillShuster” (backwards) on easel. Oil on canvas, 30 by 24 inches. Photograph courtesy of Zaplin Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In 1920 serious health issues brought William Shuster to New Mexico, beginning forty-nine years of creativity, exploration, and community engagement. Though he received some fine-arts training in Philadelphia, it was not until he experienced the inspiration of Santa Fe that he decided to dedicate his life to art. Almost immediately he integrated himself into Santa Fe’s burgeoning bohemian art scene, and made a reputation for himself as an eccentric and passionate member of the community with an unsurpassed lust for life. Shuster embraced the unique beauty of New Mexico, from Carlsbad Caverns to Canyoncito and the Badlands. The artwork he left behind illuminates the natural beauty and rich cultural heritage of the state that gave him a new lease on life. Shuster quickly moved to the center of the Santa Fe art scene, becoming close friends with American modernist painter John Sloan and a member of one of the city’s first artists communities, Los Cinco Pintores.

Fig. 2. Eagle Dancer, c. 1934, study for the fresco The Voice of the Sky, 1934/1943, on the patio of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Watercolor and graphite on tracing paper, 8 ¼ by 6 ¼ inches. New Mexico Museum of Art Santa Fe, bequest of Jerome B. Munday; photograph by Blair Clark.

Five painters—Jozef Bakos, Fremont Ellis, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash, and Shuster—came together in the early 1920s at a time when Santa Fe was beginning to establish a distinctive identity as an arts colony. These five were part of a younger bohemian scene in the city and had not been able to make much headway into the artistic community of more established artists thriving in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. Fremont Ellis came up with the name “The Five Painters,” but his wife, Laurencita Gonzales, suggested the Spanish Los Cinco Pintores to reflect the culture of the area. In November of 1921 Bakos published a manifesto for the group stating its “endeavor to reach out to the factory, the mine and the hospital, as well as the gallery, and it aims to awaken the worker to a keener realization and appreciation of beauty, thus helping to develop the art instinct which lies latent in every human mind.”1

Fig. 3. The Santo Domingo – Corn Dance, 1929. Signed “Will Shuster” and inscribed with the painting’s title at lower right. Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 by 39 5/8 inches. New Mexico Museum of Art, gift of the artist; photograph by Cameron Gay.

As a group they were more interested in the potential of art enriching the lives of everyday people than a dedication to a common aesthetic or philosophy of art. Affectionately referred to as “five little nuts in five mud huts,”2 they built adjacent adobe homes on Camino del Monte Sol, effectively creating Santa Fe’s first art-colony road.

Fig. 4. Home Dance – San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1922–1928. Oil on masonite, 22 1/2 by 25 1/2 inches. Owings Gallery photograph.

John Sloan and Shuster were introduced in 1920 over dinner by the owners of the boarding house on the corner of Guadalupe Street and San Francisco Street (then called Jefferson Street) where they both stayed when they first came to Santa Fe. This fortuitous encounter led to a lifelong friendship, and to the older Sloan—who was twenty-two years Shuster’s senior—becoming a mentor to the aspiring younger artist. Sloan first visited New Mexico in 1919 on the advice of Robert Henri, who some four years earlier had convinced the New Mexico Museum of Art’s founder, Edgar Hewett, of the importance of modern art and was seminal to the establishment of the museum. Sloan and Henri were prominent members of the Ashcan school in New York, a group of realist artists focused on representing the lives of everyday people and the poorer neighborhoods of the city. Sloan brought this interest in finding inspiration in ordinary life with him to New Mexico. Shuster picked up these themes in his own work. Over the next thirty years, Sloan continued to visit New Mexico regularly, painting primarily genre scenes of community life, such as Puebloan religious ceremonies.

Fig. 5. Fire at Bustos Midway Cash Store at Pecos – N.M, 1947. Signed “Will Shuster” at upper right and inscribed with the title on the back. Oil on canvas board, 25 by 35 ½ inches. Zaplin Lampert Gallery photograph.

Pueblo life and culture were a recurring theme for Shuster, too. While many earlier depictions of native ceremonies could be documentary in nature, skewing to the anthropological, modernists like Sloan and Shuster captured the feeling and expression of these ceremonies, pulling the viewer in close to the action. As time went on and Sloan became conscious of issues surrounding the representation of native peoples, his paintings pull back, offering a more realist and respectful representation of these ceremonies, similar to the composition we find in paintings by Shuster such as The Santo Domingo – Corn Dance (Fig. 4). Shuster would have been familiar with the evolution of Sloan’s treatment of this subject, and Sloan’s work certainly informed the way Shuster approached his art, but Shuster always remains true to his own vision. Sloan enthusiastically encouraged Shuster to paint the life of the native people of New Mexico and for both artists it was a staple of their regional subject matter.

Fig. 6. La Lavendera, 1922. Signed and dated “Will SHUSTER/ 22” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 40 ¼ by 30 ¼ inches. Owings Gallery photograph.

Sloan’s influences on Shuster went beyond local subject matter. He first sparked Shuster’s interest in printmaking when he sent him a textbook on the principles of etching. Shuster’s zest for the new medium often distracted him from his painting. In a letter to Sloan he writes, “Painting has been at a standstill because of the etching splurge, but somehow or other it doesn’t bother me much.”3 Shuster made large editions of etchings focused on picturesque regional scenes and was especially fond of making Christmas cards. He was particularly taken by the populist nature of printmaking and made his prints with an eye to accessibility and affordability. The large editions made them available to any who wanted one. He priced them within the budget of tourists with even the most limited of means. His etchings earned attention outside of New Mexico, with the New York Times publishing a glowing review of a series of prints exhibited at the Society of Independent Artists in New York City in 1923.4

Fig. 7. Storm Over Los Alamos, 1958. Signed and dated “Will Shuster 58 San Ildefonso” at lower right. Pastel on paper, 10 ¼ by 14 3/8 inches. Owings Gallery photograph.

When it came to making art for all, undoubtedly Shuster’s most communitarian contribution to Santa Fe is Zozobra—a soaring cloth and paper marionette representing Old Man Gloom that is burned every year in late summer. It is almost impossible to imagine Santa Fe without Zozobra. Dramatic and therapeutic, one of Santa Fe’s most unique and spectacular community celebrations, the group catharsis that is the burning of Zozobra is both a staple of local culture and a lightning rod for visitors to Santa Fe.

Fig. 8. 40th Wedding Anniversary, undated. Oil on board, 24 by 26 3/8 inches, including original frame made by the artist. New Mexico Museum of Art, gift of Catherine Rayne; Gay photograph.

The roots of Zozobra reach deep into the fertile artistic soil of Santa Fe. The first burning of Zozobra was the result of an artistic collaboration between Will Shuster and Gustave Baumann in 1924. Their inspiration came from the Yaqui Indians of Mexico who, during the nation’s Holy Week celebrations, lead a donkey carrying an effigy of Judas around their village.5 At the end of the day, the effigy, which is filled with firecrackers, is set alight. Shuster and his good friend E. Dana Johnson, a newspaper editor, came up with the name Zozobra. As the story goes, they flipped at random through a Spanish-English dictionary landing on the word that in Spanish means “anguish, anxiety, gloom,” or “the gloomy one.”

Fig. 9. Shuster (center) with the Zozobra marionette in a photograph of c. 1950. Photograph courtesy of the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Shuster and Baumann burned the first Zozobras at private parties attended by the other artists in the community. The ceremony was introduced into the city’s annual Fiestas celebration in 1926. The burning of Zozobra was kept going through the devotion of Shuster until 1964, when he passed responsibility for the event to the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe, who have kept his cultural legacy thriving ever since.

Fig. 10. Shuster poses with the head of Zozobra, c. 1950. Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe photograph.

When he died in 1969, Shuster—who served in the United States Army in World War I—was buried in Santa Fe National Cemetery, in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. His death was an occasion for regional mourning. In its coverage of Shuster’s funeral, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported: “It snowed last Thursday when they buried Will Shuster, and later that snow turned to rain and sleet. In the skies, Zozobra reigned, but the people who attended the funeral service went along out to the cemetery to be with their old friend to the very last.”6 

Fig. 11. The commencement of the Zozobra burning ceremony in 2007. Photograph by Will Keightley on Wikimedia Commons.

A Fiery Light: Will Shuster’s New Mexico is currently scheduled to be on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art until May 2. Check nmartmuseum.org for updates.


1J. G. Bakos, “Los Cinco Pintores Manifesto,” El Palacio, the magazine of the Museum of New Mexico, vol. 11, no. 9 (November 1, 1921), pp. 111–112. 2See Joseph Dispenza, Louise Turner, Will Shuster: A Santa Fe Legend (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1989), p. 61. 3Ibid., p. 30. 4“Independent Art Show,” New York Times, February 28, 1923, p. 16. 5For more about Baumann in Santa Fe, see Susan Morgan, “Artist of the Land of Enchantment,” The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2018, pp. 60– 67. 6Santa Fe New Mexican, February 16, 1969. Also see Stacia Lewandowski, Light, Landscape, and the Creative Quest: Early Artists of Santa Fe; with, Walking in the Path of the Artists: a Guide Booklet to the Artists’ Homes (Santa Fe, NM: Salska Arts, 2011). p. 145.


CHRISTIAN WAGUESPACK is curator of twentieth-century art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. 

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