Indian Portrait with Tomahawk, State 1 [SOLD]

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) was a world-renowned painter, sculptor and printmaker who was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota.  Scholder, who was one-quarter Luiseño (a California Mission tribe) Payómkawichum, had a complicated relationship with his Native peoples.  He sought, in what would become some of his most influential artworks, to deconstruct the romanticized vision of the American Indian.  

Scholder was frustrated by his initial experiments with lithography.  He called the process “laborious and terribly technical.”  Despite his initial misgivings, he ultimately fell in love with lithography when he began working at Albuquerque’s Tamarind Institute in the early 1970s.  By the time he created this piece, he’d been making lithographs for five years.

“Indian Portrait with Tomahawk” is a bold, audacious and beautiful piece.  Scholder, ever the innovative genius, makes something totally unique out of a subject that has been depicted in countless artworks: the elaborately adorned Indian chief.  He is seen in profile, as is the traditional Indian style.  Nothing else about this piece could be described as “traditional.”  It is distinctly Scholder, and it is one of his finest images.

Most of the subject’s body and clothing is made of just two colors: blue and red.  In some places, these two colors are combined in thick blocks to create different shades of purple and pink.  In other areas, like the subject’s beautiful feathered headdress, Scholder winds lines of blue and red into, out of, and over one another.  The result is a wealth of depth and texture that is hypnotic and beautiful.

This lithograph was completed in January 1975 in an edition of 75.  This is #41 of 75.  It is mounted with its edges exposed.  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