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Find out from this more information about the Apache sculptor, painter, and book Illustrator and his parents; Sam and Blossom Haozous.

Allan Capron Houser, also known as Haozous, was an Oklahoma-born Chiricahua Apache sculptor, painter, and book illustrator. He was a well-known Native American painter and modernist sculptor of the twentieth century.

Houser’s work can be seen at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., as well as a number of significant museum collections in North America, Europe, and Japan. Houser’s Offering of the Sacred Pipe is also on exhibit at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York City.

Who is Allan Haozous?

Houser began his professional career in 1939, when he exhibited at the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition. He won his first significant public commission to create murals at Washington, DC’s Main Interior Building. He also married his wife of 55 years, Anna Maria Gallegos of Santa Fe.

In 1940, he was commissioned by the US Department of Interior to create life-sized indoor paintings. After that, he returned to Fort Sill to study under Swedish muralist Olle Nordmark, who encouraged Houser to pursue sculpture. That year, he made his first wood carvings.

When World War II disrupted Houser’s life and profession, he relocated his growing family to Los Angeles, where he found work in the shipyards.

Houser worked during the day and painted and sculpted at night, establishing connections with students and instructors at the Pasadena Art Centre. He was introduced to the streamlined modernist sculptural statements of artists such as Jean Arp, Constantin Brâncuși, and the English sculptor Henry Moore here for the first time. These three masters, together with the English sculptor Barbara Hepworth, who was one of the first to include sculptural gaps into the solid planes of her works, would have a significant influence on Houser.

Houser petitioned for a position at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, after WWII. Haskell, a Native American boarding school, lost many graduates to the war and sought to honor them with a sculptural memorial.

Houser had been carving in wood since 1940, but he had never sculpted in stone. With his drawings and conviction, he persuaded the jury, and in 1948, he completed the monumental work Comrades in Mourning in white Carrara marble. It has become a symbol for both the artist and Native American art in general.

Legacy of Allan Houser

Allan Houser died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of eighty in August 1994.

He was fortunate to have been the kind of artist who did not need to be “discovered” after his death, for he enjoyed a career in which he was able to create not just for his own satisfaction but for an appreciative public as well.

Upon his death, the honors kept coming. Among these was the installation of 19 monumental works of art in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Olympics, and a retrospective of 69 works at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. in 2004—2005. The exhibition marked the first major show for the new museum, and over three million people viewed it while it was on display.

As a teacher for most of his working life, Allan Houser also enjoys the legacy of having passed on his direction, patience and skills to generations of Native American artists, including many from the IAIA years who are, in turn, passing on their skills to other generations.

After Houser’s death in 1994, his legacy has been carried on by family members, including his two sons who have achieved success as sculptors, Philip Haozous and Bob Haozous, and his grandson, Sam Atakra Haozous, an experimental photographer. The non-profit Allan Houser Foundation is devoted to the proliferation of the Houser name. The family also maintains a commercial gallery of Allan Houser’s work in downtown Santa Fe and the Allan Houser Compound, a foundry and sculpture garden located south of Santa Fe.

In 2018, Houser became one of the inductees in the first induction ceremony held by the National Native American Hall of Fame.

A figural group created by Houser in 1990 was moved to the Oval Office when Joe Biden began his presidency in 2021. The sculpture depicting a running horse and a Native male rider is currently placed on one of the shelves in the president’s office and was previously exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Who are the parents of Allan Houzous

He was the first member of his family from the Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache tribe born outside of captivity since its spiritual leader Geronimo’s 1886 surrender and the tribe’s imprisonment by the U.S. government. Houser’s parents, Sam and Blossom Haozous, belonged to the Chiricahua Apache tribe — hunter-gatherers, who roamed from northern Mexico to New Mexico.

The strong foundation provided by his parents inspired Allan Houser to become one of the most recognizable artists of our time. It is no wonder that his sons, Phillip and Bob Haozous, are artists. Each of these three individuals forged their own unique path as an artist.

source: www.ghbase.com

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