Velino Herrera

Born in New Mexico, Velino Shije Herrera, also known as Ma Pe Wi, was a Zia Pueblo artist, who studied at the Santa Fe Indian School. He first exhibited in 1919 at the Museum of New Mexico and showed artwork the following year at the annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York City. Herrera also contributed artwork to an exhibition of Native art that traveled across the United States and Europe from 1931 to 1933. In 1939, the federal government commissioned Herrera to paint a series of murals in the eighth-floor penthouse at the Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C., together with Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser, Navajo painter Gerald Nailor, and Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo. During his career, he illustrated several books on Pueblo life and taught painting at the Albuquerque Indian School. Herrera rarely painted after 1954, due to injuries he sustained from a car accident.