Allan Houser
Courtesy of Allan Houser gallery
Allan Houser was a Chiricahua Apache artist (1914-1994). He joined painting school at the Santa Fe Indian School at the age of twenty. He changed his last name from Haozous to Houser as was suggested by the school’s administrators. In 1937 he had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of New Mexico.
He taught at the newly created Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He set up the sculpture department and it was here where he built up his status as one of America’s foremost modernist sculptors.
In 1937 he set up a studio with his peer Gerald Nailor. The studio was in Santa Fe and they worked on paintings and silkscreen prints. In 1992 he became the first Native American awarded the National Medal of Arts.