Galloping Indian No. 2 [SOLD]

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) was a contemporary American artist who was by birth one-quarter Luiseño Indian.  He was educated at the University of Arizona, earning an M.F.A. before moving to Santa Fe in 1964 to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts.  Scholder’s unique artistic voice influenced a generation of Native artists through his artwork and his efforts as an instructor. Scholder did not wish to be identified as an “Indian Artist,” and at one point actually vowed never to paint images that were distinctively Indian.

Scholder eventually began painting Indian images, but not in the manner in which they’d been depicted in the past.  He had no interest in the romanticized, idealized vision of the American Indian seen in thousands of traditional paintings.  Scholder’s Indian was raw, real, and human.  More importantly, Scholder’s Indian was visually arresting and unlike anything that had been created before.

Despite struggling with his early experiments with the medium, Scholder very quickly came into his own as a lithographer when he began working under the guidance of master printers at Albuquerque’s Tamarind Institute.  Scholder’s first major lithography project was an eight-image suite of lithographs titled “Indians Forever.”  These early pieces, when compared to his later works, are mostly straightforward and representative of their subjects.  This piece shows him moving into more expressionistic, experimental territory.

Galloping Indian No. 2 was completed in May 1972.  It is the forty-first of the 104 lithographs that Scholder would create during his first five years working at Tamarind.  It is a singular, dreamy image: a masked man riding a masked horse, holding a spear or flag.  The viewer’s eyes are drawn immediately to the masks.  Interestingly, these masks are the only part of this piece that contain no ink.  Nowhere else in this piece is the paper’s beautiful off-white color allowed to appear. 

The horse’s body is a kinetic cloud of purple smoke, its legs just a single point extending from the bottom of the bulging mass. The man is barely visible, peeking out from behind the horse’s head.  Their placement on the left side of the image gives the viewer the impression that the horse and rider are in motion, having just crossed the empty right side.  The horse’s hair hangs horizontally in the air, combining with that of its rider and further blurring the two beings into one.  Scholder possessed a unique mastery of color and a completely singular compositional style, both of which are apparent in this haunting and beautiful masterpiece.

This lithograph is featured on page 83 of Clinton Adams’ book Fritz Scholder Lithographs.  It was produced in three colors and completed in May 1972 in an edition of 50 Arabic numbered copies and five Roman numbered copies.  This is #V/V.  It is signed by the artist and mounted so that the entire image is visible.  The lithograph was executed at Tamarind Institute, the renowned lithography workshop in Albuquerque that is affiliated with the University of New Mexico.

Provenance: from the large collection of a Santa Fe resident
Condition: original condition
Recommended Reading: Fritz Scholder Lithographs by Clinton Adams