War Dancer

War Dancer presents three of Oscar Howe's most preferred characteristics: 

• abstracted American Indian figure
• implied motion
• fractured background treatment 

An additional attribute in War Dancer is its deeply saturated color.  Mr. Howe's selective attention to color was still another strongpoint.

Price available upon request

(1915-1983) Born in Joe Creek, South Dakota, on the Crow Creek Reservation on 13 May 1915, Oscar Howe was given the name Mazuha Hokshina meaning "Trader Boy".

A student at The Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School between 1935 and 1938, Howe earned his BA from Dakota Wesleyan University in 1952 and his MFA the following year having attended the University of Oklahoma. At the Indian Arts Center in Lawton, Oklahoma he learned mural techniques while working with Olaf Nordmark.

Following military service in World War II between 1942 and 1945, he taught art at the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Pierre Indian School in South Dakota where he later became Director of Art. At the University of South Dakota in Vermillion he was a Professor of Fine Arts. Later Howe was chosen to be an artist in residence at Dakota Wesleyan University and at the State University of South Dakota. An active man, he served on various boards, two of which were for the Institute of Indian Studies and the University of South Dakota.

The earliest listed exhibition for Mr. Howe took place in 1956 at the prestigious Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

His work is included in every major museum with an emphasis in fine Native American Art. Some of these are: the Denver Art Museum; the Heard Museum; the Oscar Howe Art Center; the Joslyn Art Museum; the Museum of the American Indian; the Montclair Art Museum; the Museum of New Mexico; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Philbrook Museum of Art; the Sioux Indian Museum and Craft Center and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.

There are multiple YouTube videos chronicling Oscar Howe’s work as an artist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETmg3RpdwtI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXWfp29PpNQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH55G9okQOk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeQzXMJ4Lq8

In 2022 and 2023 Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe, an exhibit consisting of many major examples of Mr. Howe’s artworks was hung in three (3) different museum venues: the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, South Dakota.  A 200 page hard-bound catalogue accompanied the exhibit.

An online catalogue raisonne is currently in progress.