Fritz Scholder - Native Americans Series

Native Americans Series

He met Cherokee designer Lloyd Kiva New and studied with Hopi jeweler Charles Loloma. After receiving a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, Scholder moved to Tucson and became a graduate assistant in the Fine Arts Department where he studied with Andrew Rush and Charles Littler. There, he met artists Max Cole, John Heric and Bruce McGrew. After graduating with an MFA Degree in 1964, Scholder accepted the position of instructor in Advanced Painting and Contemporary Art History at the newly formed Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Scholder has always worked in series of paintings. In 1967, his new series on the Native American, depicting the “real Indian,” became an immediate controversy. Scholder painted Indians with American flags, beer cans, and cats. His target was the loaded national cliché and guilt of the dominant culture. Scholder did not grow up as an Indian and his unique perspective could not be denied. Scholder resigned from IAIA in 1969 and traveled to Europe and North Africa. He returned to Santa Fe and acquired a small adobe house and studio on Canyon Road.

In 1970, Tamarind Institute moved from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. Scholder was invited by Tamarind to do the first major project, a suite of lithographs, Indians Forever. It was the beginning of a large body of work in that medium for the artist. Scholder/Indians was published by Northland Press, the first book on Scholder’s work. In the same year, Scholder had his first one-man show at the Lee Nordness Galleries.

He had become a major influence for a generation of Native American artists. He was invited to lecture at numerous art conferences and universities including Princeton and Dartmouth. In 1972 an exhibition of the Dartmouth Portraits opened at Cordier and Ekstrom in New York to favorable reviews. In the same year, Adelyn D. Breeskin of the Smithsonian American Art Museum visited Scholder and suggested a two-person show of the work of Scholder and one of his former students. Scholder chose T. C. Cannon. The show opened in Washington, D.C. to good reviews and traveled to Romania, Yugoslavia, Berlin, and London. Scholder was invited to have a one-man show at the Basil V International Art Fair in Switzerland in 1974. After Basel, Scholder traveled to Egypt and painted the sphinx and pyramids.

In 1975, Scholder did his first etchings at El Dorado Press in Berkeley, California. That same year a film documentary on his work was shown on PBS and a book of his lithographs was released by New York Graphic Society. Scholder discovered monotypes in 1977. His first exhibition of photographs was shown at the Heard Museum in 1978, documented by Indian Kitsch, a book published by Northland Press. A miniature book of Scholder’s poetry was produced by Stinehour Press in 1979. In 1980, Scholder was guest artist at the Oklahoma Art Institute, which resulted in a PBS film documentary, American Portrait. His second retrospective opened at the new Tucson Museum of Art in 1981. Scholder drew lithographs at Ediciones Poligrafa in Barcelona and was guest artist at ISOMATA, USC at Idyllwild, California and again at the Oklahoma Arts Institute.