The Potters of Mata Ortiz: Transforming a Tradition

The Potters of Mata Ortiz documents one of the great pottery revivals of the modern era. In the small village of Mata Ortiz in Chihuahua, Mexico, near the ancient ruins of Casas Grandes (Paquimé), Juan Quezada and a community of artists revived and reinvented a ceramic tradition rooted in the prehistoric pottery of the region. This bilingual exhibition catalogue, issued by the University of New Mexico Art Museum, presents more than fifty pots by twenty-six artists, with full English and Spanish text.

The catalogue is notable for taking these potters seriously as named individual artists rather than anonymous craftspeople, profiling makers such as Nicolás Ortiz Estrada and the husband-and-wife team of Héctor Gallegos and Graciela Martínez. Its plates show the range of the work, from pieces faithful to ancient Casas Grandes forms to dazzling effigy figures and finely painted ollas. As a museum record of a living tradition that bridges the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico, a clean copy like this one preserves both scholarship and a moment in art history.