Biography
Born in 1937 in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder was famous for his controversial, pioneering depictions of Native Americans, and for his paradoxical stance toward Native American art. While his work paved the way for the next generation of Native artists, Scholder himself often downplayed his Native American identity, particularly when it interfered with the critical reception of his art. The artist passed away in 2005.
Scholder was of French, English, and German descent, and was an enrolled member of the Luiseño tribe, but primarily identified as a painter. “I’ve never called myself an Indian artist,” he said. “Everyone else has.”
In 1964, Scholder accepted a teaching position at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. At the time, he publicly promised two things: The first was to instill his love of color and composition in his students, a promise he never broke. As an artist, he expanded on Francis Bacon’s perplexing, disturbing, and emotive use of color and on Willem de Kooning’s forceful painterly distortions. His second promise was to never depict Native Americans in his art. This promise, he broke just a few years later. “I realized that someone needed to paint the Indian differently,” he said.
Scholder began his groundbreaking series of paintings unflinchingly depicting alcoholism, poverty, and the cultural subjugation of Native Americans, with Indian No. 1 (1967). Scholder’s “real Indians” were painted with beer cans, American flags, ice cream, and all the flotsam of modern life. The ostensible purpose was to combat the clichéd depictions of Native Americans that confined them to a romantic past. Yet the work was controversial, provoking criticism not only from the public at large, but from Native Americans as well.
The powerful series propelled the artist into notoriety and lifelong fame. The works were immediately recognized for their insight and transformative commentary on Native stereotypes. The controversy was not altogether unwelcome to Scholder either, who appreciated strong reactions to his work. “I don’t care if they react negatively or positively,” he said, “as long as they react.” But there was always a tension between the artist, focused on materiality, paint, and technique, and his subject, rife with its political meaning that threatened to dominate perceptions of the work. However complex and contradictory, Scholder’s approach was foundational for the generation of Native American artists that followed.
Scholder has been the recipient of countless grants and awards, including: a New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (1983); the lifetime Societaire of the Salon d’Automne (1984, Paris); the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement (1985); a Humanitarian Award from the 14th Norsk Hostfest (1991); a Visionary Award from the Institute of American Indian Arts (1996); and an Arizona Governor’s Award (2002). He received fellowships from the Whitney Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Ford Foundation, among others. In 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger inducted Scholder posthumously into the California Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington D.C.) mounted a career retrospective of his work, Indian/Not Indian, that opened concurrently at the NMAI’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York. In 2015, the Denver Art Museum opened the major traveling exhibition Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967–1980, which traveled to the Phoenix Art Museum and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, Kansas) through 2016. Scholder has been the subject of over a dozen books and three public television documentaries.
The artist received a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Sacramento and a master’s from the University of Arizona. He was awarded five honorary degrees from Ripon College, University of Arizona, Concordia College, the College of Santa Fe, and the University of Wisconsin, Superior.
His work is featured in numerous international public collections, including: the Museum of Modern Art; the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris); the Los Angeles County Museum; the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others.
