Object Record
Images
Metadata
Artist |
Scholder, Fritz |
Title |
Dying Warrior in South Dakota |
Date |
1972 |
Medium |
Acrylic on Canvas |
Culture |
Luiseño |
School |
Contemporary realism |
Catalog Number |
2013.1.1 |
Collection |
Contemporary Indigenous Art |
Object Name |
Painting |
Credit line |
Gift of John & Kathy Anderson, Shelbyville, TN |
Didactic Information |
One quarter Luiseno, Native American artist Fritz Scholder created colorful, expressive paintings that challenge Indian stereotypes while infusing his work with stylistic influences from California artist Wayne Thiebaud and British artist Francis Bacon. Scholder's paintings reveal a frank interpretation of Indian customs, traditions, and harsh realities of daily existence. Inspired by Bacon's distorted figures from his 1950s "Screaming Popes" series that emulated Diego Valázquez's seventeenth-century portrait of Pope Innocent X, Scholder's Dying Warrior in South Dakota draws from the history of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The United States Cavalry killed more than 150 men, women, and children in a campaign to disarm the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In Scholder's painting a pale, aging warrior in the agonizing throes of death reclines on a white iron bed and blood-red blanket (signifying life) within a pitch-black room (signifying death). (Feb 2017) |