ALLAN HOUSER (HAOZOUS) 1914-1994

Born in 1914 in Apache, Oklahoma, Allan Houser was to become one of the 20th Century's most important artists. Allan's parents, Sam and Blossom Haozous, were Warm Springs Chiricahua Apaches held as prisoners of war at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Allan was instilled with a strong sense of history and cultural heritage. He was also gifted with a facility for drawing and an interest in art.

In 1934 Allan moved to New Mexico to study at the Painting School of the Santa Fe Indian School. Becoming the school's most famous graduate, he exhibited and sold his paintings and drawings and was selected for major mural commissions in the late 1930's. His first major sculpture was completed in 1948 as a commission to honor Native Americans who had lost their lives in World War II. It would become the first of some 700 he would create over the course of the next five decades. He evolved a unique style of sculpture in which he assimilated experiences from his life with modernist sculptural aesthetics.

As he and his wife Anna Marie raised a family of five sons, Allan taught art for twenty five years, first at the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah, then culminating with thirteen years at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a teacher, his refined sense of design and honorable manner imbued thousands of students with an incomparable artistic influence.

Dedicating himself full-time to his own work in 1975, Allan Houser's sculpture would be shown and admired throughout the United States and Europe. As his international acclaim grew, his work was added to countless private collections, as well as corporations and major museums.

In reviewing Houser's career, he was the recipient of the National Metal of Arts; Recipient of the Prix de West from the National Academy of Western Art; acquisitions by three of the Smithsonian Institution Museums; and over fifty public installations of monumental sculpture.

Figarelli Fine Art is the exclusive Arizona Representative of the Estate of Allan Houser.