Jo Mora

File:Jo mora yosemite map thumbnail.jpg

Yosemite Map

Joseph Jacinto "Jo" Mora (1876–1947) was a Uruguayan-born American cartoonist, illustrator and cowboy, who lived with the Hopi and wrote extensively about his experiences in California. He was an artist-historian, sculptor, painter, photographer, illustrator, muralist and author. He has been called the "Renaissance Man of the West".

Biography

Mora was born on October 22, 1876 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was the Catalonian sculptor, Domingo Mora, and his mother was Laura Gaillard Mora, an intellectual French woman. His elder brother was F. Luis Mora, who would become an acclaimed artist and the first Hispanic member of the National Academy of Design. The family entered the United States in 1880 and first settled in New York, and then Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Jo Mora studied art in the New York and Boston, at the Art Student's League in New York and the Cowles School in Boston. He studied with William Merritt Chase. In Boston, he worked as a cartoonist for a newspaper called the Boston Traveler and then worked for the Boston Herald.

In the spring of 1903, Mora arrived in Solvang, California. He stayed at the Donohue Ranch. He made plans to travel to the Southwest to paint and photograph the Hopi. He spent time at the Mission Santa Inés; those photographs are now maintained by the Smithsonian Institution. Mora visited many Spanish missions in California that summer by horseback. He followed the "Mission Trail", also called the "Kings Highway".

From 1904 to 1906, Mora lived with the Hopi and Navajo near Oraibi, Arizona. He took photographs, painted and otherwise recorded the daily life of these Native Americans, including the Hopi Snake Dance. He learned the Native languages and made detailed drawings of what he observed.

The Bret Harte Memorial in San Francisco.

In 1907, Mora returned to California and married Grace Needham. Their son, Joseph Needham Mora, was born on March 8, 1908. The Moras moved to San Jose, California, where Mora continued his work. By 1919, he was sculpting for the Bohemian Club, including a memorial plaque dedicated to Bret Harte, completed in August 1919 and mounted on the outside of the private men's club building in San Francisco. In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. During this period he also illustrated a number of books, made large murals, and published charts, maps (cartes) and diagrams of the West and Western themes. Beginning in 1937, Mora wrote and illustrated children's books about the West. In 1939, a Works Progress Administration project was completed, with Mora bas-relief sculpture adorning the King City High School Auditorium building. Mora died October 10, 1947, in Monterey, California.

In music

• Western performer Mike Beck's album Where the Green Grass Grows includes a song about Mora entitled "In Old California". It was written by Beck and Ian Tyson.
• The rock group The Byrds used images from a 1932 Mora poster, The American Cowboy Rodeo, as the cover art for their album Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

File:Jo Mora - Scratching A Twister.jpg Scratching A Twister, 1915

File:J Mora - Poppy Girl.jpg Poppy Girl, 1915

The facade of the Robert Stanton Theater at King City High School in King City, California. Completed in 1939, this Works Progress Administration project featured bas-relief sculpture by Jo Mora

References

• Pecina, Ron and Pecina, Bob. Neil David’s Hopi World. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2011. ISBN 978-0-7643-3808-3;pp. 8,9,54,55.

Bibliography

• A Log of the Spanish Main (1934) OCLC 57523092 ASIN B00085UYN0.
• Trail Dust and Saddle Leather (1946) ISBN 0-8032-8145-5.
• Californios: The Saga of the Hard-Riding Vaqueros, America's First Cowboys (1946) ISBN 0-922029-19-9.
• When I Get Wound Up Writing I'm a Bad Article to Squelch: The Written Words of Jo Mora (2008) ISBN 0-615-23139-X.

Museum Catalogs

• The Year of the Hopi: Paintings and Photographs by Joseph Mora, 1904-'06, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., 1979
• Jo Mora: Artist and Writer, Monterey Museum of Art, 1998
• Back to the Drawing Board with Artist Jo Mora, Monterey History and Art Association, Monterey, CA, 2003

External links

• Komanecky, Michael K.: Jo Mora and the Missions of California, in: Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, Vol. 91, 2007, 207- 217
• Jo Mora Trust site
• Profile by Monterey Museum of Art
• California Views: The Pat Hathaway Photo Collection - Jo Mora
• Jo Mora Hopi Indian Photograph Collection
• Cline Library Jo Mora Photo Collection
• Californios
• Carmel Mission, Mora Chapel
• Brief profile of Mora
• The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Joseph Jacinto Mora