Charting a Century of Native American Painting

The exhibition “Stretching the Canvas: Ten Decades of Native Painting” at the National Museum of the American Indian offers a journey through the evolution of painting by Native American artists since the end of World War I. This showcases an art form that has been largely overlooked within Washington D.C.’s museums.

Native Artists and Modernist Expression

One prominent Native American artist featured is Dick West, known for adopting modernist abstraction. His piece “Spatial Whorl” from the period 1949-1950 exemplifies this style with its vibrant multicolor design.

Historical Context and Challenges

Native American artists have often been mistakenly categorized as primarily involved in crafts such as textiles and ceramics, limiting their exposure in major art venues. The National Gallery of Art staged “Contemporary American Indian Painting” in 1953, a rare focus on Native painters that hasn’t been revisited significantly since then. In 2023, the Gallery’s exhibition “The Land Carries Our Ancestors” included some paintings but did not focus exclusively on this art form.