Fritz Scholder, Painter of American Indians, Dies at 67

February 14, 2005

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

Fritz Scholder, an American expressionist painter and sculptor whose “Indian” series of paintings in the 1960’s and 70’s reimagined the depiction of Native Americans, died on Thursday in Phoenix. He was 67 and lived in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The cause was complications of diabetes, said his wife, Lisa Markgraf Scholder.

Although best known for his paintings, Mr. Scholder produced work in a variety of media – lithographs, photographs, sculpture and books. His work is in dozens of museum collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Much of Mr. Scholder’s art exudes an air of mystery. His paintings, which celebrate paint with drips, smears, energetic brushwork and vivid underpainting, have been described as symbolist or colorist. Abstract Expressionists like de Kooning and Franz Kline informed his style, and the influence of Francis Bacon, Richard Diebenkorn, Goya, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Cy Twombly is also evident.

“Painting the Paradox” (1997), a documentary that was shown on PBS, provides a glimpse into Mr. Scholder’s world, which, beginning in 1972, revolved around his adobe-walled compound in Scottsdale, where he lived and produced series noteworthy both for their subjects and for their titles, including “Mystery Woman,” “Monster Love,” “Martyr” and “Shaman.” His favorite subject was women, and he approached this and other subjects, including mortality and isolation, with renderings of single and paired figures as well as skulls and skeletons.

As a child he collected stamps and coins and was fascinated by foreign cultures, especially ancient Egypt. Ultimately, Mr. Scholder traveled to Egypt, Transylvania and other exotic locales, accumulating artifacts and occult objects that have figured prominently as props in his work. His house included a skull room and he surrounded himself with taxidermic creatures, including an 11-foot African lion and a buffalo.

In a 2001 interview in The Times, Mr. Scholder, said he was a “natural optimist, which might be surprising, because I like the dark side of things.” He regularly fashioned self-portraits in different guises, including a buffalo and a sphinx. His last, rendered in 2003, shows him seated with an oxygen tube in his nose as a pool of blood accumulates on the floor alongside a book and a photograph. In the foreground, an Egyptian cat gazes up at him.

Born in Breckinridge, Minn., Fritz William Scholder was the fifth Fritz in a family of primarily German ancestry. He was one-quarter Native American (one of his grandmothers was from the Luiseño tribe in California). He grew up in Wahpeton, N.D., and in Pierre, S.D. In 1957, he studied at Sacramento City College with Wayne Thiebaud, who arranged for his first one-man show.

He received a B.A. from Sacramento State College in 1960 and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1964. Soon after, Lloyd Kiva New, the arts director at the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., invited Mr. Scholder to join the faculty.

In 1967, while teaching painting at the institute, he began his “Indian” series. His innovative approach, based on research and observation, was a radical departure from traditional, sentimental renderings of mythic Indians. He said he was the first artist to paint an Indian wrapped in an American flag, an image that still resonates. It is based on 19th-century prison photographs of Indians dressed in surplus flags in lieu of their confiscated tribal regalia.

In an essay for the book “Fritz Scholder: Paintings,” Frank Goodyear, director of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, wrote of the “Indian” series: “Scholder recognized that it was time for a painter of Indians to develop a new idiom in Indian painting. That idiom was best expressed in his words ‘Real, not Red.’ ”

In 2001, the Institute of American Indian Arts dedicated a museum gallery in Mr. Scholder’s honor. His awards include fellowships from the Ford, Rockefeller and Whitney foundations.

He is survived by his wife, Lisa; a son, Fritz William Scholder VI of Tampa, Fla.; a grandson, Fritz VII; and two sisters, Sondra Clark of Los Altos, Calif., and Kristina Anderson of San Leandro, Calif. Cognizant of his artistic afterlife, Mr. Scholder retained favorite works from his many series and took pride in designing his own catalogs, posters and postcards, which patrons and admirers prized. “Documentation is very important because it lasts longer than any show,” he said.

His creative ritual often involved entering his studio late at night and painting to music. “It’s a turn-on,” Mr. Scholder said. “But it’s also terribly serious, because it is in a way one of the universal rituals of making a mark on something that will last longer than you.”

Read original article, which appeared in Section A on p.19.