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Beatien Yazz

Díne (Navajo), 1928-2013

BiographyBeatien Yazz, Little No Shirt (Jimmy Toddy) was born in 1928 on the Navajo Reservation. Yazz showed promise as an artist very early. At an early age, Yazz met the Lippencotts, traders at the Wide Ruins Trading Post and they made available to him scraps of paper and other equipment so that he might practice in color.

He served in the U.S. Marines in World War II and was a member of the famed Navajo Code Talkers. Following the war, he returned to the reservation and began to paint in earnest. He specialized in subjects familiar to him in his daily life on the reservation. He has been eminently popular with collectors since the 1950s.

During the last 20 years of his life, Beatien Yazz suffered from severe eye problems. The medical doctors had not been able to determine what the problem was. A Navajo Medicine Man said it was because he once painted the Navajo sacred Yeibichai. To be cured, Yazz must undergo a purifying ceremony performed by the Medicine Man. This is very expensive and Yazz was never able to afford it.

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