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Ad Code: 3
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"A High Chinook Along the Beartooth Range"
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Washington state, Earl Biss became a well-known Native American artist. He was raised by his grandmother on the Crow reservation in Montana and earned a scholarship to the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe where he studied jewelry design. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute and then traveled widely in Europe where he was heavily influenced by the impressionist style of Monet and other European artists.
His paintings have a dream-like, abstract quality with Indian figures merging with the landscape. He worked on numerous paintings, sometimes as many as twenty, simultaneously. On October 18, 1998, he died from a stroke while in his studio painting.
Source:
Dana Ivers, former wife of the artist | |
Biography from Cooper's Art Gallery & Brokerage:
|  • Native American Heritage – Crow
• Raised on the Crow Reservation in Montana
• His Indian name was Spotted Horse
• Principal works are oil on canvas.
• 1965 – 1966 Studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Was a member of the inaugural class. The IAIA was founded in 1962.
• Studied under Fritz Scholder, Charles Loloma, Alan Houser and John Chamberlain.
• 1966 – 1972 Studied at the San Francisco Art Institute.
• At the outset of his career, Biss’s studio was in Santa Fe, and his contemporaries included Kevin Red Star, Doug Hyde, T.C. Cannon, Bruce King, Chuck Goodwin, Pete Jones, Dan Namingha, Harry Fonseca, Bob Haozous, Gordon Van Wirt, Don Chunestudey, Cliff Fragua and Bill Prokopiof.
• Their works of art were bold and innovative, informed rather than limited by their intrinsic awareness of their heritage. They created the phenomenon that became known as Contemporary Southwest Art.
• The names of a dozen or more of these trailblazers have passed into legend now, but none shines more brightly than Earl Biss.
• One of Biss’s first solo exhibits in a major contemporary gallery was with Elaine Horwitch in Scottsdale in 1975. Not only did his paintings sell on their own merits, but Biss had launched his reputation as a “personality”. The collectors bought out the show on opening day!
• His paintings and his life reached back to a time that was wild and free. Less than a hundred years before his lifetime, his ancestors had roved the Great Plains, and it was from these legends that he drew not only his primary subject but his primal energy. He painted an unending cascade of warriors. He was like a prairie fire roaring through the grass of the High Plains. Earl Biss existed to paint. He left a brilliant trail of paintings that had a profound impact on American art.
• Partial List of Public Collections:
The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ The Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK
The Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe The Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC
The Denver Museum of Fine Art The Museum of the Plains Indian, Browning MT
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Biography from American Design Ltd.:
| Earl Biss was a contributor to the explosion of Southwestern Art in the
last half of the 20th Century, and particularly for the rise of
contemporary Native American Art.
His portraits of Plains
Indian horsemen, his use of the medium of oil painting, and above all
the exuberance of his brushwork brought him attention.
Biss was a Crow Indian who, as a boy, spent summers on the reservation
in Montana and, as an adult, he returned frequently to live and work
there. He absorbed tribal legends and history from the elders,
roamed the sweeping mountain landscape, and found inspiration for his
finest works.
He was a central figure in the miracle generation
of students at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe during
the late sixties. Together, these talented young artists changed
the face of Indian Art and Southwestern Art, injecting vivid color and
a modernistic sensibility into what had been a sedate genre of linear
realism. Biss was known as the catalyst for this remarkable
group.
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| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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