Fritz Scholder’s 'Four Indian Riders'

“If a Pop artist is one who is challenging cliches, then, in a way, I must be one, because the American Indian has become the biggest of cliches.” – Fritz Scholder
 
A striking depiction of four Native Americans on horseback painted in vibrant hues that nod to Post-War influences, Four Indian Riders may be the most recognizable painting Fritz Scholder ever created. Prominently included in the National Museum of the American Indian’s foundational 2008-2009 retrospective Indian/Not Indian, Four Indian Riders was also chosen as the catalogue cover for the exhibition. Now emblematic to the show that encouraged greater review and highlighted the enduring relevance of Scholder’s art into the twenty-first century, Four Indian Riders perfectly articulates Scholder’s complex identity, straddling the role of insider and outsider in both his art and in his understanding of his culture.

Fritz Scholder studied art at Sacramento State University under Wayne Thiebaud and earned his MFA from the University of Arizona, where he developed his bold, color-driven style inspired by the pop art, color field, and abstract expressionist movements. In 1967, while teaching painting and art history at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Fritz Scholder painted his first Indian, thus changing the trajectory of his entire career.

Inspired by his own experiences, he began painting Native Americans in ways that directly confronted and shattered long-standing stereotypes. As he explained, ‘“I vowed to myself that I would not paint Indians. Then I saw the numerous over-romanticized paintings of the ‘noble savage’ . . . and decided that someone should paint the Indian in a different context.” Rather than stoic warriors or mystical figures, his subjects were modern, complex, and often subversive: Native Americans awash in bright colors drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, eating ice cream cones, or draped in the American flag. Originally, the reception to these works was sometimes mixed, according to Scholder:
 
My work immediately startled many people because I, part-Indian, treated the Indian differently, not as the ‘noble savage’ endlessly portrayed by White painters, and also because my technique was non-Indian. I felt it to be a compliment when I was told that I had destroyed the traditional style of Indian art, for I was doing what I thought had to be done.

Scholder, of part Native American and part European ancestry, often said he was "not Indian" in the traditional sense, which gave him a unique, often controversial lens on Native identity. His provocative imagery and refusal to conform to cultural expectations made a lasting impact, helping to reinvent Native American art within the broader canon of Post-War and Contemporary American art. His fascinating and creative synthesis of his cultural identity and contemporary American art movements allowed him to redefine both.

Scholder pushed boundaries and critically challenged existing traditions, working to shift Native American art from an overly romanticized category plucked from nineteenth-century stereotypes to a thriving part of the contemporary art world. Paintings like Four Indian Riders defy classification—transcending the categories of traditional, modern, Pop, Indian, not Indian—and continue to provoke intrigue and attention as the viewer ponders these contradictions alongside Fritz Scholder.