Indian Image

Fritz Scholder, Indian Image, 1972, acrylic on canvas, stretcher: 68 ¹⁄₈ x 80 in. (173.0 x 203.2 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1973.151

Artwork Details

Title: Indian Image
Artist: Fritz Scholder
Date: 1972
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum
/
3rd Floor
/
North Wing
Dimensions: stretcher: 68 ¹⁄₈ x 80 in. (173.0 x 203.2 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of the artist
Mediums: acrylic
Mediums Description: acrylic on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Landscape — plain
Indian
Equestrian
Object Number: 1973.151
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1973.151

Artwork Description

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.