FRITZ SCHOLDER

In a softly shimmering blue, then brown, then green, then gray, then pink, then green, then violet, then blue again, the colors of present day New Mexico landscapes are layered horizontally. In stark contrast to the pastel colors of these landscapes that shimmer with light, the figures by Fritz Scholder (1937–2005) stand out against clear, monochrome, saturated backgrounds.

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, Scholder addressed how depictions of Indigenous bodies, realities, and (hi)stories appeared primarily as projection surfaces for a white majority society. By repurposing historical photographs, exaggerating them, and tipping them into the grotesque, Scholder exposed power dynamics that continue to shape the production and circulation of images to this day. His works address questions of visual sovereignty—the right to determine one’s own representation—and reveal how deeply the representation of Native Americans is shaped by colonial perspectives. With humor, but also with stark, unflinching clarity, Scholder liberated himself both from these visual regimes and the Indigenous visual traditions prevalent at the time to create contemporary images of his own. 

The comprehensive exhibition Fritz Scholder presents, for the first time outside North America, the artist’s paintings, drawings, collages, and lithographs, thereby broadening the scope of what has been hitherto understood as American Pop Art.