Zozobra
Will Shuster
Created : 1964
Loaned : 1991
Medium : Mural
Dimensions: 72 inx84 in
Located: 3rd Floor,South Main Hallway
Will Shuster’s oil on canvas murals of Zozobra have been on loan to the CAC since 1993. They are removed annually during Fiestas for exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts and returned shortly after.
Lent by the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico
Santa Fe
These murals, which for years adorned the walls of El Nido, a Tesuque restaurant, were purchased for the permanent collection of the museum, with major funds donated by Margot and Robert Linton and Las Trigos Fund. Additional support was provided through the Council for Art of the West and donations from Phyllis and Ed Gladden, Mr. and Mrs. Jay McDonald Williams, the Santa Fe Kiwanis Club, Charles and Valerie Diker, Frank and Dolores Ortiz, Helen Shuster, James S. Ipiotis, Ray Sandoval, and a partial gift from Irene Arias Walker in memory of Raymond Arias.
Will Shuster, a lively member of the Santa Fe art colony and the famous artists’ group, Las Cinco Pintores, came to Santa Fe from Philadelphia in 1920 to recuperate from injuries he received after being gassed in World War I. He remained in Santa Fe after his recovery and was loved by all who knew him. In 1926, Shuster, along with other members of the artist colony, felt that the annual Santa Fe Fiesta had become dull and commercialized and decided to liven it up. “Somebody had been down to Mexico,” Shuster recalled, “and had seen a parade where they carried a figure of Judas and beat it with colored whips and later burned it.” Shuster created the effigy, named “Zozobra” (old man gloom), E. Dana Johnson, Shuster’s friend and editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Every year, Zozobra’s anguished moans and groans loudly proclaim the death of gloom, doom, and despair and the beginning of fiesta! Through the years, Will Shuster has come to represent the early Santa Fe art colony itself, just as Zozobra has come to symbolize the Santa Fe Fiesta.
