Oscar Howe and the Origins of Contemporary Native American Painting
By Chadd Scott on
Oscar Howe was a radical in accountant’s clothing. An artistic revolutionary in a white, short-sleeved button-down dress shirt with pens in his pocket, thick black glasses, and a banker’s haircut. A square. One of his favorite hobbies was bowling.
Looks can be deceiving.
Oscar Howe (1915-1983; Yanktonai Dakota) painted some of the most radical pictures ever by a Native artist. Radical by 2020 standards, let alone for the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s when he was producing them.
Frenzied motion. Horses bucking and buffalo galloping. Stylized Native figures. Strong. Spiritual.
Howe mixed Cubism, Italian Futurism, geometry, precise lines, graphic arts, and the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) culture he lived in to depict dances and hunting scenes.
Oscar Howe, 'War Dancer,' 1959. Courtesy Oscar Howe Art LLC.
He not only painted the pictures, he advocated for them, and for all Native artists interested in working outside the conventional norms colleges and collectors and museums shackled them with. Not demurely. In contrast to his middle-management appearance, he fought for modernity like an AIM activist. The most famous example being his iconic excoriation of Philbrook Indian art competition jurors in 1958 after his submitted artwork was rejected as “non-Indian.”
“Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way,” Howe protested to the jurors. “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 knows what is best for him?”
Ouch.
Howe catalyzed a movement among Native artists to express their individuality rather than conforming to an established style limiting artistic expression. He proved that art could be simultaneously modern and embedded in customary culture and aesthetics—to him there was no contradiction.
Along with the likes of George Morrison and Fritz Scholder, Oscar Howe stands as an essential forefather of contemporary Native American painting. His legacy of innovation and advocacy continues inspiring Native artists to take pride in their heritage and resist stereotypes.
Howe’s prominence has grown tremendously since a retrospective exhibition of his work, “Dakota Modern,” opened in 2022 at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York. The show traveled to the Portland Art Museum and the South Dakota Art Museum at South Dakota State University, sharing Howe’s singular, dynamic vision of Native American life and ceremony with new generations.
Oscar Howe, 'Origin of the Sioux,' 1960. Oscar Howe Art LLC.
Oscar Howe Catalogue Raisonné
The University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where Howe taught in the art department from 1957 through 1980, is capitalizing on his momentum by putting together a catalogue raisonné for the artist. A catalogue raisonné strives to document every artwork produced by a given artist. It is an exhaustive, eye-blurring task requiring hundreds of hours of research.
USD believes its Howe catalogue raisonné will be the first complete example for a Native American artist. An online version available to the public is expected in late 2026 with a physical publication due out the following year.
Great credit for the project is owed to Howe’s wife Adelheid Hample who kept a detailed accounting of all the paintings he sold. The couple’s only daughter, Inge Dawn Howe Maresh, has also been essential in initiating the project and helping see it through.
The University of South Dakota wasn’t starting from scratch in the effort. It possesses the largest collection of his artwork. In addition to paintings, the school has roughly 300 drawings. It owns preliminary sketches for paintings, for the large Works Progress Administration murals he completed at the Corn Palace in Mitchell and in Mobridge, SD. A pilgrimage to the Corn Palace is a must for Howe devotees. It possesses his drawings for the “North American Indian costumes (1564-1950), v.1” book (1952) he illustrated.
The USD Archives and Special Collections hold his papers. Also on campus is the South Dakota Oral History Center with an extensive collection of recordings from Howe talking about his life.
Howe did give away numerous artworks throughout his life, pieces that eluded Adelheid’s ledger. USD’s University Art Galleries are asking all private collectors with Howe artworks to please contact them at uag@usd.edu to update their information within the Howe database for inclusion in the catalogue raisonné. All information can remain confidential.
Oscar Howe, 'Woman Scalp Dancer,' 1964. Oscar Howe Art LLC.
Oscar Howe at USD
Oscar Howe was born at Joe Creek on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. He attended the Indian Boarding School in Pierre. He furthered his artistic education at the Santa Fe Indian School, graduating in 1938. There, he was taught by Dorothy Dunn, the influential Anglo art department head.
Dunn encouraged her students to reflect their Indigenous heritage through their artwork, but to do so in a uniform, flat – lacking three-dimensional perspective – style then most palatable to collectors. This came to be known as the Santa Fe “studio” style.
Despite only teaching at the Santa Fe Indian School for five years, 1932 to 1937, Dunn instructed an astonishing number of future Native art icons: Pablita Velarde, Pop Chalee, Harrison Begae, Awa Tsireh, Allan Houser.
Like Howe, Houser would prominently rebel against Dunn’s “one style fits all” approach to teaching and strict conventional norms placed upon Native artists.
Howe’s education continued with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954 before accepting a teaching posting at USD in 1957. He was a legendary artist who felt his greatest impact existed in the classroom.
“His main mission was to provide space for Indigenous artists to be who they are in the contemporary present and make art in whatever way that suited them,” Amy Fill, Director of USD’s University Art Galleries, said. “His legacy, the artists that have come through the programming here at USD, either as his direct students or students of the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute, which he was the founder of, which still occurs every summer, a lot of those artists are now professional, working, full time artists doing their own amazing work.”
Despite the recognition Howe did receive in his lifetime, which was considerable, prioritizing his Native students over his own career contributed to Howe not breaking through on the broader American art landscape like Morrison or Scholder did, and why his recognition waned until “Dakota Modern.”
“Oscar was born in South Dakota, and this was his home. He could have gone to New York or Chicago, and maybe he would have received more recognition if he had been in a bigger city, but it was important for him to be here,” Fill said. “This was his home and providing mentorship and support for Indigenous student artists was a passion.”
In addition to holding the Howe family collection of artworks and pieces donated by his wife, in an unusual and mutually beneficial agreement, USD supplemented Howe’s income throughout his teaching tenure by purchasing artworks from him annually to add to its collection. That’s how the school has the largest assembly by far of Oscar Howe paintings.
Unfortunately, in USD’s Oscar Howe Gallery, what visitors will see are high quality prints of Howe’s original paintings. Good reasons for this exist. Howe painted primarily on paper, and paper is notoriously susceptible to degradation from light and longstanding public display. Also, with the market for Howe’s paintings skyrocketing, gallery security falls short of what is required to comfortably safeguard the artworks. Better safe than… the Louvre.
The good news is, for anyone enterprising enough to visit little Vermillion in the extreme southeastern corner of South Dakota 40 miles northwest of Sioux City, IA, Fill will be happy to take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of the archives to see the original artworks with advance notice. Contact her directly.
