The revered artist Allan Houser created an elegant bronze figural in Mountain Echoes, a solemn depiction of three enigmatic singers. Houser elected to minimize extraneous details that might draw attention from the totemic figures whose open-mouths indicate that their voices are audible. Whether an acknowledgment of ceremonial rite or a remembrance of his youth, Houser never strayed far from his Apache heritage in his art. Working in paint, stone, and bronze, his attention harnessed action conveyed in form and texture to enliven his art. Mountain Echoes is a minimalist statement in which each figure is enfolded by a cocoon of horizontal striation and a richly accented patina. The broad faces of the individuals are the only smooth finished surface on the arrangement, which situates their bodies in sentinel-like poses. The formal composition is a dignified acknowledgement of the role of music or sound in the rituals and ceremonies that continue to be a uniting force for tribal identity and culture.

      A significant individual in the evolutionary development of modernist Native sculpture, Houser’s formal art training commenced at the Santa Fe Indian School from 1934-38, under the direction of Dorothy Dunn. He went on to teach the newly established Institute of American Indian Arts in 1962. Houser’s sculptures were not bronze cast until 1968.¹ Prior to this date, he worked primarily in stone and wood. After the war, Houser moved to Los Angeles, where access to museums and galleries and distance from the Santa Fe Studio environment informed his awareness of Anglo-European art movements in sculpture and painting. He was commissioned by Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kansas in 1948, to create a memorial in stone that honored fallen Natives who served in the military during WWII.

      Houser’s early sculptures revealed his growth through experimentation in a variety of forms that embraced Western influences by minimalists such as Constantine Brancusi, British sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and the American, Isamu Noguchi. Like Scholder and Morrison, Houser too recognized the limiting classifications of “Indian” and “Native” applied by non-Indian critics and academics to his work. The demarcations corralled the development of modern forms by association with race and the craft traditions of utilitarian products from an era past. This catalyst urged Houser to evolve from the Studio Style of painting he had been trained to replicate by Dunn.

      Along with the themes of his Apache heritage, including abstracted non-figural forms, there remained intact in Houser's work organic shapes in a naturalist style.² Houser commented on his incorporation of other influences:

      I am continuing to utilize traditional Indian themes, but I want to be free to inquire in a contemporary way, like Noguchi or Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth, all of whom I admire very much. I want my work to reflect the heritage I am proud of, but I also want my work to reflect the full range of what I’m capable of doing. It has always been my hope that my work would be acceptable all over the world, not as the work of an Indian artist, but of a contemporary American sculptor.³

      In painting and sculpture, Houser skirted issues of politics with visual reference to a global style, although his subjects ultimately embodied a distinctive Southwestern regionalism. As he drew from the exposure to wider artistic movements and intellectual resources through self-education, travel, and shared discussions with colleagues, Houser shared his acquired knowledge with Native students until he retired from teaching in order to give artmaking his full attention. Along with the distinguished Anishinaabe (Chippewa) painter and sculptor George Morrison, his work honored with a retrospective exhibition for the inauguration of the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. in 2004.

¹ See chronology for Houser in Truman T. Lowe, Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser, (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2004),107.

² See Jackson Rushing’s excellent discussion on nature in Houser’s work. Jackson Rushing, Allan Houser: An American Master, Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2004), 152.

³ Lowe Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser, 87.


Image courtesy Larsen Gallery.