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Fritz Scholder did a whole series of paintings of Indian men wrapped in or bearing aloft the American flag from 1970 to 1979. These were bitter pictures. Organizers of the retrospective of Scholder’s art opening Nov. 1 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and NYC believe that Scholder based some on 19th-century photographs of Indians wrapped in blankets. His “flag” pictures were also painted during a period when Native Americans were fighting and dying in Vietnam War and the Indian Movement had resisted the U.S. government at Alcatraz (’69), and Wounded Knee (’73).
Anne Edgar, on behalf of NMAI