Artist: Boris Deutsch
Date: 1938
Museum: Smithsonian's National Postal Museum (Washington, United States)
Technique: Mural
In the southwestern town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a Lithuanian-born artist painted a mural in the post office depicting an Indian Bear Dance. Boris Deutsch was born in the town of Krasnagorka, Lithuania on June 4, 1892. His mother encouraged his artistic aspirations from a young age, and he studied art in the Russian city of Rega and then in Berlin. He was drafted into the Russian Army in World War I, but deserted when he heard that his battalion was being deployed to the Caucasus mountains. After traveling through China and Japan, Deutsch arrived in Seattle, where he worked for a commercial engraving and arts company. He eventually relocated with his family to Los Angeles, where he worked in special effects for Paramount Pictures. In 1938, his design for a mural in the Hot Springs, New Mexico Post Office won a competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts of the US Treasury, and he painted Indian Bear Dance. In 1939, he received a commission from the United States Treasury Department to paint murals in the Los Angeles Terminal Annex Post Office, Cultural Contributions of North, South and Central America, and he also painted the Reedley, California post office mural, Grape Pickers. Deutsch focused largely on portraits, and made them integral features of his murals. He employed modernist concepts such as loose, expressionist strokes and flattened, almost cubist, qualities. Mr. Deutsch’s work is displayed in collections throughout California and the United States, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Boris Deutsch died in Los Angeles in 1978.The town of Truth or Consequences sits on land that was the territory of the Chiricahua Apache. Visitors were first drawn to the area for its hot springs, referred to as early as the 1860s as Las Palomas Hot Springs. In the late 19th Century, several ranch houses were built, and at John Cross Ranch, an adobe bath house was built over Geronimo Springs. One of the first large-scale irrigation projects in the region was the Elephant Butte Dam and Reservoir, part of the Rio Grande Project under the Reclamation Act of 1902. During construction of the dam and reservoir, large numbers of visitors began coming to the hot springs, and the town was incorporated under the name Hot Springs in 1916. In 1937, it became the seat of Sierra County. The town was renamed in 1950 after a popular NBC radio program called “Truth or Consequences.” The host, Ralph Edwards, announced a contest to rename a small city in the United States after the program. Edwards promised that the program would annually visit the first town to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Today, the town of Truth or Consequences is known as a spa town for its hot springs resorts. Tourism literature claims that before European and American settlers came to the area, American Indian people considered it “neutral grounds” and came to gather without conflict, trade, bathe, and cure various ailments. However, the primary source evidence for this use of the hot springs is minimal.The Apache tribes, including the Chiricahua, are a part of the Athabaskan language family, indicating a likely early migration from Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and west-central Canada. By the time of Spanish colonial incursion into the Southwest in the late 16th century, large and loosely affiliated groups of Chiricahua were established throughout the southwest in what is now western New Mexico, eastern Arizona, and northern Mexico. Relations with the Spanish and the Mexicans were never without friction, and these fractious relations continued with the United States after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the Compromise of 1850, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, through which the United States acquired most of the territory that would become the state of New Mexico (then known as the New Mexico Territory). In the 1860s, tensions flared over increased white encroachment onto Chiricahua lands. In 1861, the Bascom Affair helped ignite the Apache Wars when Chiricahua leader Cochise and his family met with Lieutenant George Nicholas Bascom, who accused the Chiricahua of stealing cattle and kidnapping a 12-year-old boy. Cochise denied the charges and was able to escape, but his family was held hostage. Bascom demanded the return of the boy and the cattle, and after several violent skirmishes, Cochise and his men killed several American captives, and Bascom hanged Cochise’s brother and nephews. Cochise then joined forces with his father-in-law, a powerful Chiricahua chief named Mangas Coloradas. They continued a long run of retaliatory actions against white settlers, and brought together Cochise’s Chokonen-Chiricahua and Mangas Coloradas’s Chihenne-Chiricahua to drive American settlers out of Apache territory. In January 1863, Mangas Coloradas agreed to meet with United States military leaders at Fort McLane in southwestern New Mexico. Upon arrival, he was taken into custody and subsequently tortur../..
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