Google, the largest search engine commemorates “Native American Heritage Month”, at this moment the great Allan Haozous’s work is being celebrated.
He is working on a sculpture of an Apache man and woman which is the subject of the artwork that is prominently shown on the Google homepage and is also known as a Google Doodle. Artist Lynnette Haozous, who is related to the Haozous family produced the November 3, 2023 Google Doodle.
Google is commemorating Native American Heritage Month by highlighting the work of Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Haozous in today’s Google Doodle, wherein he is shown chiseling a sculpture of an Apache man and woman. https://t.co/C3Bmp1aWlv
— ARTnews (@artnews) November 3, 2023
In this post, you will get all the information related to Allan Haozous.
Why is Allan Haozous Famous?
The full name of Allan Haozous is Allan Capron Houser or Haozous and he was a Chiricahua Apache sculptor, painter and book illustrator born in Oklahoma. He was one of the most well-known Native American artists and Modernist sculptors of the 20th century.
Houser’s artwork is held in major museum collections in North America, Europe and Japan as well as at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
From Where Did Allan Haozous Get Education?
Houser was born in 1914 on the family farm near Apache and Fort Sill, Oklahoma into the Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache tribe. Sam and Blossom Haozous are his parents.
Twenty-year-old Haozous traveled from Oklahoma to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1934 to study in Dorothy Dunn’s Art Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School. Working from personal recollection, eschewing modeling or perspective techniques and stylizing Native iconography were all encouraged by Dunn’s manner.
Haozous was one of Dunn’s best students for the latter producing hundreds of sketches and canvases while he was in Santa Fe, but he felt that the curriculum was too restrictive.
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When Did Allan Haozous Start His Professional Work?
Houser began his first professional work in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition. He got his first big job painting panels for the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C.
He got married to Anna Maria Gallegos of Santa Fe and was married to her for 55 years. He was hired again by the US Department of the Interior in 1940 to make life-sized murals for public buildings. Then he went back to Fort Sill to study with Olle Nordmark, a Swedish muralist who encouraged Houser to try sculpture.
Houser’s life and business were interrupted by World War II. He moved his growing family to Los Angeles and found work in the shipyards there. Daytimes, Houser worked and at night, he painted and sculpted. You can see his painting skills in a tweet provided below in which Google honored him:
In honor of #NAHM, today’s #GoogleDoodle celebrates Chiricahua Apache sculptor and painter Allan Haozous (Houser) who is considered one of the most important Native American artists of the 20th century.
Learn about his impactful life and artwork —> https://t.co/JxHEmzvPaa pic.twitter.com/zpQAhxKUsx
— Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) November 3, 2023
He made friends with students and teachers at the Pasadena Art Center. This is where he first saw the clean, contemporary sculptures of artists like Jean Arp, Constantin Brancuși and Henry Moore from England. These three guys and the English sculptor Barbara Hepworth had a big impact on Houser.
When WWII was over, Houser tried to get a job at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Many of Haskell’s Native American graduates died in the war and the school wanted to remember them with a sculpture. Houser had been working in wood since 1940, but he had never carved stone before.
His drawings and his belief helped the jury make up their minds and in 1948, he finished the huge work Comrade in Mourning, which is made of white Carrara marble.
Where Did Allan Haozous Teach Painting?
Houser taught painting at the mostly Navajo boarding school Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah, from 1952 until 1962. Houser had more time to teach, raise a family and concentrate on his art during the Intermountain years.
There, he experimented with watercolors, oils and other mediums, finishing hundreds of paintings. In addition to his job at Intermountain, he was an illustrator for children’s books, contributing paintings and sketches for seven different publications, one of which was an illustrated biography of his grand-uncle Geronimo.
Houser received an invitation to join the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts, a recently established Native American art school in 1962. He and his family moved back to Santa Fe, where he became the head of the Institute’s sculpting department.
In addition to being a teacher, Houser cast his first bronzes in 1967. He brought ideas and his personal experience to a student body that included Native Americans from all across the country. While still teaching at the Institute in the early 1970s, Houser started the demanding cycle of production and display that would make him famous.
In 1973, Houser won the Gold Medal in Sculpture at the Heard Museum Exhibition. The following year, he displayed paintings and sculptures at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa.
He held a solo show at the Governor’s Gallery in the State Capitol in Santa Fe that same year. Houser left his full-time teaching position at IAIA after thirteen years in order to focus on sculpture.
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