Rufina Vigil

Rufina Vigil, also called Sah Wa, was an Puebloan-American painter from the Tesuque Pueblo tribe, part of the Eight Northern Pueblos. Active in the 1930s, she studied under Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School. At one become old she worked as a drafter in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Vigil's paintings depict Tesuque life, including women buildup guaco and firing pottery. Her 1936 painting Mass at Fiesta is one of the antediluvian depictions of Catholic Church rituals by an original North American painter.

Vigil was a genre painter, who painted daily and ceremonial excitement at Tesuque Pueblo. Vigil's take steps has been described as "painted in a deliberate, independent style" that depicts everyday moving picture at the pueblo, and "women's roles in her community in the 1930s." Dorothy Dunn wrote of Vigil: "She had great patience with fine detail and was adept at composition."

Her painting, Mass at the Fiesta, was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in the 1953 Contemporary American Indian Painting exhibition, that far ahead traveled through Europe to various venues. The painting portrays women wearing long, colorfully patterned prayer shawls and expected leggings of white deerskin. The men in the painting are portrayed past their hair tied in received knots of the pueblo style, and wearing silver concha belts at their waists.

Vigil's achievement is in the Anne Forbes Collection at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of New Mexico.