Mateo Romero (b. 1966) is a Cochiti Pueblo painter, printmaker, and mixed media artist whose bold, materially complex works place him among the most compelling contemporary Native American artists of his generation.Mateo Romero was born and raised in Berkeley, California, but through his father, Santiago Romero, and his father's deep connection to their Southern Keresan Cochiti people, he grew up with a meaningful relationship to the Rio Grande Pueblo world. He studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and at Dartmouth College, working with acclaimed artists Ben Frank Moss and Varujan Boghosian, before earning an MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico.Romero's Art StyleRomero's paintings are rooted in Abstract Expressionism, drawing on the energy and formal ambition of Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell. "Bold colors slash across canvas, hot colors vibrate next to cold, drips and smears hover over the surface," Romero has said of his own practice. "Action painting references abound in stabbing, gestural marks." His figurative work evolved into mixed media, incorporating historical photographs and a personally invented technique that fuses asphalt into painted surfaces. His celebrated Dancer series exemplifies this approach, combining material experimentation with cultural imagery in ways that are entirely his own.A Contemporary Pueblo VoiceRomero's early narrative paintings provided pointed commentary on contemporary Pueblo life, organized around subjects including addiction, Indian gaming, and the legacy of Wounded Knee. As his practice matured, the work grew more formally adventurous without losing its cultural grounding. That combination of political awareness, personal history, and abstract formal language gives Romero's work a distinctive urgency that sets it apart from both conventional Native American art and mainstream contemporary abstraction.The Legacy of Mateo RomeroRomero has exhibited internationally across the United States and Canada, and in 1999 created lithographs at the Tamarind Institute as part of the Trickster Project. In 2008, he was selected as the SWAIA Indian Market poster artist. He is a Dubin Fellow in painting at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, and in 2019 he and his brother Diego Romero were jointly named recipients of the Native Treasures Living Treasures award, which honors Native American artists who have made outstanding contributions to Indigenous arts and culture. Romero paints in his Santa Fe studio and lives at Pojoaque Pueblo.