Santa Fe House

B.J.O. NORDFELDT, 1878-1955

Returning to Chicago in 1903, Bror Nordfeldt worked as a portrait artist, a set designer for the Little Theatre, and teacher, whose students included Raymond Jonson, modernist painter whom he later joined in New Mexico. From 1917 to 1940, he lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and initially painted sympathetic Indian figures and used Indian motifs as design elements in his canvases. He was one of the founding members of the Indian Artists Fund, an organization dedicated to preserving the heritage of the Pueblo tribes.