Lot 164
Two Native Americans lithographs: Jerome Richard Tiger (Apache, 1914 - 1994), Observing the Enemy, 1967, edition 376/1500, and Allan Houser (Creek-Seminole, 1941 - 1967), Apache Fire Dancer, 1992.
Biography from the Archives of askART: Jerome Tiger was a full blood Creek-Seminole, born in 1941 in Oklahoma. He grew up on the campgrounds that surrounded his grandfather's Indian Baptist church near the sleepy town of Eufaula. Research for many of his paintings began when he was still a child as he traveled with his maternal grandfather, Coleman Lewis, a Baptist Missionary. Coleman traveled throughout Indian Country and on the long rides through the backwoods to churches, and Coleman taught his grandson the history of the Creek people in his native Creek language.
In Enfaula and, later, in Muskogee, Tiger attended public schools, learned English, and became familiar with such marvels of white culture as running water, indoor toilets, and telephones. He was a high school dropout, a street and ring fighter of exceptional ability, and a laborer. He married and had three children. And he died in 1967, at the age of twenty-six, of a gunshot wound to the head. Tiger's legacy was his paintings: a body of work of exquisite beauty that revolutionized American Indian art.
The success and genius of Tiger's art can be attributed to what was called the Tiger style--a unique combination of spiritual vision, humane understanding, and technical virtuosity. In subject matter and composition, his art was traditional. In every other respect, it was a radical departure from classical Indian art.
When Tiger began painting in the 1960's, few, if any, artists could make a living in Indian art. With some formal training at the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, against all odds, he committed himself to Indian art, and from 1962 until 1967, produced hundreds of paintings that from the outset received the acclaim of critics, won awards, and brought him success and recognition. The average Indian art buyer of the 1960's was unduly critical, ready to find fault with the quality of a piece of work or the authenticity of its details. To be popular with such an audience, not only did Tiger have to be technically competent but inventive and prolific.
Tiger's uncanny ability to draw virtually anything after only a momentary glance has led critics to refer to him as the Rembrandt or Goya of Indian art. This is quite a lofty comparison since Tiger had never seen the work of the masters with whom he was compared. But characteristic of all great art, Tiger's work had universal appeal. Its beauty and deep spirituality spoke to people of all races, not just Native Americans.
Since his death, Tiger's style has had a tremendous influence on the Indian artists that have succeeded him. One art critic commented--"Wherever there are Indian paintings today, Tiger's influence can be felt." With almost unanimous agreement, Native American artists credit Jerome Tiger with being the major influence in the development of contemporary Indian art. Tiger was an artist's artist.
Sources:
Submitted June 2004 from the Ashworth Collection of Western and Native American Art in Fort Smith, AR. Material for this biography was obtained from the web site www.jerometigerart.com and http://www.jerometigerart.com
Biography from the Archives of askART: Born on the family farm near in Apache, Oklahoma, Allan Houser became one of the Southwest's most famous and financially successful twentieth-century sculptors, known for his abstract Indian subjects. In his book, Masters of American Sculptors, Donald Martin Reynolds referred to Houser, who was Chiricahua Apache, as the "patriarch of American Indian sculptors. . . .Through his prodigious output and a generation of students and followers, Houser has been a formidable force in shaping contemporary Indian sculpture". (205). In 1993, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened a sculpture garden in his honor.
With close ties to Arizona, Houser was the grandson of the chief who served as Geronimo's interpreter and a great nephew of the Apache Chief, Geronimo. Houser had the Apache name of "Haozous", translated in English as 'The Sound of Pulling Roots'.
At age 15, in 1929, he left high school to help his father run the farm, but five years later enrolled in the Santa Fe Indian Art School founded by Dorothy Dunn. He said because it was free, it was the only art school an Indian could afford. His family were farmers, and he could only go to school when he wasn't needed at home for farm labor. However, his talent was soon recognized, and the first year of his enrollment he was named the school's outstanding artist. He also studied mural painting with Olaf Nordmark at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and he began his art career as a muralist and painter and then focused on stone and wood carving and sculpting in steel and bronze.
He worked in Santa Fe from 1936 to 1938, the only Indian specializing in sculpture, and he also painted murals in Washington D.C for the Department of the Interior; Fort Sill, Arkansas; and Riverside, California. As a painter, he did the official portrait of Stuart Udall, Secretary of the Interior and Apache Chief Geronimo for the Arizona State Capitol Building in Phoenix.
During World War II, he was a factory hand and ditch digger in California. In 1948, he won a scholarship to the Haskell Institute in Kansas, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship. There he did his first large sculpture, Comrades in Mourning. Carved from marble, it is eight-feet tall and weighs four and a half tons and remains at the Institute.
From 1951 to 1975, he taught art in Indian Schools, and also served as instructor at the Institute of American Arts. From 1962, he lived in Santa Fe from where his work was collected all over the United States. The Phoenician Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona, has one of the largest collections of his sculpture.
Source:
Peggy and Harold Samuels, Contemporary Western Artists and The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
Donald Martin Reynolds, Masters of American Sculpture
Patrick Lester, The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters
- Dimensions: 26"H x 19 1/4"W (sight), 34 1/4"H x 27 1/4"W (frame)- largest
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