Allan Houser (Ha-o-zous)

Allan Houser (Ha-o-zous, 1914-1994) was the towering figure of modern Native American sculpture, a Chiricahua Apache born in Oklahoma to parents who had been prisoners of war with Geronimo, who went on to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and, in 1992, became the first Native American awarded the National Medal of Arts. Working in bronze, stone, and steel, he distilled Apache memory into smooth, monumental forms, like the seated mother and child on this cover, that bridge tradition and international modernism.

Barbara H. Perlman's monograph, published by Glenn Green Galleries of Santa Fe and distributed by the Smithsonian Institution Press, is the standard illustrated study, reproducing hundreds of works alongside historic photographs. This 1992 second printing is boldly signed by the artist himself, "Allan Houser," on the front free endpaper. A copy carrying Houser's own signature, made near the end of his life, is a genuine artifact of one of the Southwest's most important sculptors.