Indian Image
Object Details
- Gallery Label
- The figure in Indian Image appears to be just that: a flat image, as if cut from paper and pasted onto a colorful background.
- An artist of Luiseño and European ancestry, Fritz Scholder both did and did not identify as American Indian, and early in his career, he chose not to paint American Indian subjects. He changed his mind in the 1960s, after encountering countless artworks that depict American Indian people two-dimensionally, as doomed figures existing only in a romanticized past.
- By contrast, Scholder asserted a modern American Indian aesthetic. Enlivened by pop-art color and energetic brushwork, his paintings are pointedly contemporary in style, even when based--as is Indian Image--on a historical photograph.
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist
- Data Source
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Date
- 1972
- Object number
- 1973.151
- Artist
- Fritz Scholder, born Breckenridge, MN 1937-died Phoenix, AZ 2005
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Type
- Painting
- Medium
- acrylic on canvas
- Dimensions
- stretcher: 68 1/8 x 80 in. (173.0 x 203.2 cm.)
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- On View
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, 3rd Floor, North Wing
- Topic
- Landscape\plain
- Indian
- Equestrian
- Record ID
- saam_1973.151
