Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser

Native Modernism explores the work of George Morrison and Allan Houser, the most prominent U.S. artists of a formative generation in Native American art. Working from the mid-1930s to the late 1990s, each rebelled against ideas of what Native art must look like to evolve a personal and original style.

George Morrison was a painter of color and light. As he traveled from his birthplace in Minnesota to New York and beyond, his evolving interest in Euro-American art resulted in an individualistic and vibrantly colorful form of abstract expressionism.

Allan Houser is best known as a sculptor, and his sphere of success and influence was in the Southwest. Blending Native subject matter with a sleek modernist aesthetic, his elegant and refined art represents Native peoples in stone and metal with dignity and compassion.

Together, these men profoundly influenced later generations of Native artists.

-Truman Lowe, NMAI, 2004