Ted DeGrazia

Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia (1909–1982) is the most beloved and widely collected artist in the history of Arizona, a Tucson original whose paintings of Indigenous children, desert landscapes, and Southwestern religious scenes achieved a popular reach that few fine artists ever approach. Born in Morenci, Arizona, to Italian immigrant parents, he spent virtually his entire life in the state he considered home, and his work is inseparable from his deep love of its landscape, its people, and its spiritual character. DeGrazia studied at the University of Arizona and later in Mexico City, where he formed a friendship with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco that confirmed his interest in a vibrant, accessible figuration rooted in the culture of ordinary people. His most iconic images — round-faced Diné (Navajo) and Tohono O'odham children rendered in warm, luminous color — have been reproduced on greeting cards, Christmas ornaments, and collector plates, making him one of the most widely distributed American artists of the twentieth century. Critics who dismissed this popularity as sentimentality missed the genuine warmth and technical accomplishment in his best work. In 1952, DeGrazia built his own museum, Gallery in the Sun, in the foothills northeast of Tucson — a complex of adobe structures containing his studio, living space, and gallery that he constructed largely by himself and donated to the University of Arizona Foundation before his death. In 1976, in a dramatic protest against estate taxes on art, he burned a series of his own paintings in the Arizona desert, an act that generated national headlines and contributed to changes in federal tax law affecting artists. Gallery in the Sun remains one of the most visited art destinations in Tucson, drawing collectors and admirers of DeGrazia's work from around the world. His paintings are among the most sought-after in the market for twentieth-century Arizona art.