Untitled

Fritz Scholder, Luiseño / American, 1937 - 2005
Luiseño (Luiseno)
California culture

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about 1979-1980

Acrylic on canvas

Canvas: 40 × 30 1/8 in. (101.6 × 76.5 cm)

Frame: 41 1/4 × 31 1/4 in. (104.8 × 79.4 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Maryellen and Frank Herringer, Class of 1964, Tuck 1954, Class of 2008P and 2014P

2012.20

Portfolio / Series Title

American Portrait Series

Geography

Place Made: Riverside, United States, North America

Period

20th century

Object Name

Painting

Research Area

Native American

Painting

Native American: California Culture

On view

Label

One color by itself is pretty blah. I don’t care what color you take. It’s when you put the second color next to the first color that, then things start to happen, and you get vibrations, you get, when you get purple next to an orange, things are going to happen. -- Fritz Scholder

Challenging the flat and what he deemed disingenuous representations of Native Americans by other Indigenous artists, Fritz Scholder employed masterful use of color and composition to compel a deeper contemplation of his subject. Here, the loose and gestural brushstrokes of the figure are amplified by the saturated background and its complementary shades of blue and orange.

From the 2025 exhibition Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, curated by John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961 Director; Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art; and Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programing

Exhibition History

Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 26,2025.

Provenance

Maryellen and Frank Herringer, Piedmont, California; given to the present collection, 2012.

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