Frank Applegate

Frank Applegate (1882 - 1931)

In 1921 Frank Applegate quit his job as head of the sculpture and ceramics department at New Jersey's Trenton School of Industrial Arts and moved to Santa Fe to become a painter. Fascinated by the traditional Pueblo and Hispanic cultures he found there, Applegate recorded on paper the unique ways of life of these southwestern people. The artist became an energetic and effective force in the 1920s movement to encourage and assist Native American and Hispanic craftspeople. In 1922 he became a founding member of Santa Fe's Indian Arts Fund, and he supported the creation of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in 1925.