Fritz Scholder (1937-2005
Fritz Scholder was born in 1937 in Breckenridge, Minnesota. He was the fifth consecutive male of his family to bear this name. His paternal grandmother was a member of the Luiseño tribe of Mission Indians. Scholder studied at the University of Kansas, Wisconsin State University, and with Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento College in California. He earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Arizona in 1964. In his work, he frequently showed the harsh, realistic side of Indians' lives and deaths, including the affects of alcohol, but some of his depictions are humorous such as Indians on horseback carrying umbrellas. His brushwork is generally swift, and the tone often somber and surreal. A major influence on his work was the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon, from whom Scholder adapted ironic distortions into his canvases. Fritz Scholder once vowed never to paint Indians. An enrolled member of the Luiseño Mission Tribe who didn’t embrace his Indian identity until he was an adult, he disavowed the label “American Indian artist.” Then again, he said he was proud of being an American Indian and became famous for painting Indians. But don’t focus on those much-trodden seeming contradictions of Scholder’s life and art — focus instead on his paintings.
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