Oscar Howe (''Mazuha Hokshina'' or "Trader Boy", May 13, 1915 – October 7, 1983) was a

Yanktonai Dakota The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided int ...

artist from

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large po ...

, who became well known for his

casein Casein ( , from Latin ''caseus'' "cheese") is a family of related phosphoproteins ( αS1, aS2, β, κ) that are commonly found in mammalian milk, comprising about 80% of the proteins in cow's milk and between 20% and 60% of the proteins in hum ...

and

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. Tempera also refers to the paintings done ...

paintings.Libhart, Myles and Vincent Price. ''Contemporary Sioux Painting.'' University States Department of the Interior, 1970:48-51. He is credited with influencing contemporary Native American art, paving the way for future artists.White, Mark Andrew. “Oscar Howe and the Transformation of Native American Art,” ''American Indian Art Magazine'' 23, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 36-43. His art style is marked by bright color, dynamic motion and pristine lines.'Oscar Howe Biograph'y
, South Dakota State University

Early life and education

Oscar Howe was born in 1915 in

Joe Creek, South Dakota Joe Creek is an unincorporated community in Hughes County, in the U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental juri ...

on the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation.Giago, Tim, Executive Ed. ''The American Indian and the Media'', Minneapolis: National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1991: 34 His Dakota name was ''Mazuha Hokshina,'' or "Trader Boy." Descended from hereditary chiefs, he belonged to the Yanktonai band of

Dakota people The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided ...

. He attended the Pierre Indian School (a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of " room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exte ...

) in South Dakota in 1933. His artistic talent was recognized when he was young, and Howe studied in

Dorothy Dunn Dorothy Dunn Kramer (December 2, 1903 – July 5, 1992) was an American art instructor who created The Studio School at the Santa Fe Indian School. Background Dunn was born on 2 December 1903 in Pottawatomie County, Kansas and educated in Chi ...

’s art program at the Studio of

Santa Fe Indian School The Federal Government established the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) in 1890 to educate Native American children from tribes throughout the Southwestern United States. The purpose of creating SFIS was an attempt to assimilate the Native American c ...

from 1933 to 1938. In 1940 Howe was sent by the South Dakota Artists Project (a division of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

in the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration) to Fort Sill Indian Art Center in

Lawton, Oklahoma Lawton is a city in and the county seat of Comanche County, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Located in southwestern Oklahoma, approximately southwest of Oklahoma City, it is the principal city of the Lawton, Oklahoma, metropolitan statistical ...

, to study mural painting techniques with Olle Nordmark. WPA artists were being commissioned to do murals in numerous federal buildings and sometimes local public buildings as well. He attended

Bacone College Bacone College, formerly Bacone Indian University, is a private tribal college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by missionary Almon C. Bacone, it was originally affiliated with the mission arm of what is now Ameri ...

, where his classmates included Terry Saul, and Walter Richard “Dick” West, Sr. After working for several years and serving in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Howe went to college on the

GI Bill The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...

, earning his B.A. degree at

Dakota Wesleyan University Dakota Wesleyan University (DWU) is a private Methodist university in Mitchell, South Dakota. It was founded in 1885 and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The student body averages slightly fewer than 800 students. The campus of t ...

in 1952. Having worked as an artist for more than a decade, he also taught as Artist-in-Residence. He received his M.F.A. at the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...

in 1954. Howe met his future wife Heidi Hampel in Germany while serving overseas during

. He was discharged in 1945 and returned to the United States. After winning the Grand Purchase Prize in 1947 at the Indian Art Annual, sponsored by Philbrook Art Center, he had enough funds to send for Heidi to come to the United States, and they married. In 1948 they had a daughter, Inge Dawn, their only child.

Art career

Howe's early paintings are similar to other work produced by the

. Later he developed a distinctive style of his own. Howe began with traditional Sioux "straight line" painting, based on hide and later ledger paintings of the 19th century. It was "an artistic form which symbolizes truth or righteousness." He infused it with the Native American art style Tohokmu (spider web). His work has been compared to

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, though he rejected the neo-Cubist label in favor of situating his work firmly within Lakota epistemology. Through his art, he wanted to portray the contemporary realities of his tribal culture. During the 1930s and the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, Howe was employed by the

in South Dakota. He painted a set of

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

s for the municipal auditorium in Mobridge and a mural within the dome of th
Carnegie Library, now the Carnegie Resource Center
in

Mitchell, South Dakota Mitchell is a city in and the county seat of Davison County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 15,660 at the 2020 census making it the sixth most populous city in South Dakota. Mitchell is the principal city of the Mitchell Mi ...

. Howe worked as an art instructor at Pierre High School in 1939. From 1948 to 1971, he designed panels for the Corn Palace in Mitchell. Howe became Professor of Art at the

University of South Dakota The University of South Dakota (USD) is a public research university in Vermillion, South Dakota. Established by the Dakota Territory legislature in 1862, 27 years before the establishment of the state of South Dakota, USD is the flagship uni ...

, in

Vermillion, South Dakota Vermillion ( lkt, Waséoyuze; "The Place Where Vermilion is Obtained") is a city in and the county seat of Clay County. It is in the southeastern corner of South Dakota, United States, and is the state's 12th-largest city. According to the 2020 ...

, in 1957. He taught there until 1983. Survey texts and articles on Native American

modern art Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...

often credit Howe with influencing the development of contemporary art in the Indian community. In 1958 he was rejected from a show of Native American art at the

Philbrook Museum Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum with expansive formal gardens located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum, which opened in 1939, is located in a former 1920s villa, "Villa Philbrook", the home of Oklahoma oil pioneer Waite Phillips and his wi ...

because his work did not meet the criteria of "traditional" Indian style. Howe wrote in protest,

"Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? Are we to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child and only the White Man know what is best for him... but one could easily turn to become a social protest painter. I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains."

His protest led to the acceptance of

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abst ...

within the community. Over his 41-year career, Oscar Howe won numerous awards, including grand and first prizes. His works were displayed all over the world, including

Paris, France Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

and

London, England London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

, with more than 50 solo shows.

Honors

* 1960, named Artist Laureate of South Dakota. * 1966, awarded the Waite Phillips trophy for outstanding contributions to American Indian art from the Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma. * 1970 received the Golden Bear Award from the University of Oklahoma, Norman * 1973 first recipient of the South Dakota Governor's Award for Creative Achievement * 1971 appointed Lecturer to the Near East and South Asia by the United States Department of State. He presented programs during his tour in nine countries. * Two exhibition spaces are dedicated to showing his work: the Oscar Howe Art Gallery at th
Dakota Discovery Museum
in Mitchell, and the Oscar Howe Gallery at the

in Vermillion. * From April 17, 2007, to February 17, 2008, an exhibit of Oscar Howe's work was on display at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings. Most of these works were done in casein paint. There were also works in graphite on paper and

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

of stone and bronze on display. * An elementary school in

Sioux Falls, South Dakota Sioux Falls () is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 130th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into Lincoln County to the south, which continues up ...

, is named after him. * A yearly lecture is held in his honor at the

. * The

Oscar Howe Memorial Association Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology ...

at the

is named after him and is dedicated to promoting research and educational projects in Native American art. The

also sponsors the USD Summer Art Institute, the Oscar Howe Archive Project, the Oscar Howe Memorial Lecture and the Robert Penn Northern Plains Contemporary Indian Art Collection. * From March 11 to September 11, 2022, an exhibition of Oscar Howe's work was on display at the

George Gustav Heye Center The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Sm ...

, the New York branch of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

Notes

External links

OscarHowe.org

Oscar Howe gallery
University of South Dakota
Oscar Howe Gallery
Dakota Discovery Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Oscar Artists from South Dakota University of South Dakota faculty Native American painters 1915 births 1983 deaths Dakota people University of Oklahoma alumni Dakota Wesleyan University faculty American male painters 20th-century American painters 20th-century American male artists

Early life and education

Art career

Honors

Notes

Further reading

External links