After a brief course of art study under Gittardo Piozzoni in San Francisco, Carlos Vierra’s first love drew him away and he shipped “before the mast” on a five-month voyage around the horn. Before the end of the voyage a serious accident occurred, which blended for him of ill and good. His chest was crushed against a spar by a whipping sail. This ended his sailing life and he again t,urned to art. At twenty-one he was achieving success as a marine painter when a lung ailment, probably induced. by the accident, forced him to seek a dry climate. After a year alone in a mountain cabin in New Mexico, he resumed his career as an artist and helped to found the celebrated artist colony of Santa Fe.
Before his death in 1937, Carlos Vierra’s creative development had grown in many directions, and he was recognized as an illustrator for national magazines, for his marine and desert canvases, for a superb series of mission paintings, and for the murals in the Saint Francis auditorium of the New Mexico State Museum, which he helped to complete. He planned and built his own Pueblo-style home in Santa Fe, and designed public uildings
there, becoming an authority on the architecture of the Pueblos. Photography was another highly developed interest, including, towards the end of his life, aerial photography. High among his accomplishments, however, must always stand the six murals in the Museum of Man (Museum of Us) in San Diego.
article from Carlos Vierra, Painter of Mayan Cities by Wilmer B Shields, from El Museo V II, No. 2, Museum of Man, San Diego
View works by Carlos Vierra