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Spencer Asah (ca. 1905/1910-1954) was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Five, from Oklahoma.

Early life

Spencer Asah was born around 1905 in Carnegie, Oklahoma. His Kiowa name was Lallo (Little Boy). His father was a buffalo medicine man.[1] His father provided Asah extensive cultural information that he later used in his art.

Asah attend St. Patrick's Indian Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, where he received his first art instruction from Sister Olivia Taylor, a Choctaw nun. Government field matron Susan Peters arranged for Mrs. Willie Baze Lane, an artist from Chickasha, Oklahoma to provide further art instruction for young Kiowa artists, including Asah. Recognizing the talent of some of the young artists, Peters convinced Swedish-American artist, Oscar Jacobson, director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art, to accept the Kiowa students into a special program at the school.[2]

Kiowa Five

The Kiowa Five included six artists: Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke. In 1926 Asah, Hokeah, Tsatoke, Mopope, and Smoky moved to Norman, Oklahoma and began their art studies at OU. Smoky returned home late in 1927, but Auchiah joined the group that year.[2]

In the 1928, the Kiowa Five had their major breakthrough into international fine arts' world by exhibiting at the First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Dr. Jacobson arranged for their work to be shown in several other countries and for Kiowa Art, a portfolio of pochoir prints artists' paintings to be published in France.[2]

Public collections

Asah's work can be found in the following public art collections:

* Anadarko City Museum
* Denver Art Museum
* Gilcrease Museum
* Heard Museum
* Indian Arts and Crafts Board, US Department of the Interior
* Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Denman Collection
* The George Gustav Heye Center
* McNay Art Museum
* Museum of Northern Arizona
* Museum of Northern Arizona, Katherine Harvey Collection
* Museum of New Mexico
* Oklahoma Science and Art Foundation, Gerrer Collection
* Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
* Philbrook Museum of Art
* Southern Plains Indian Museum
* Woolaroc Museum[3]

Later life

Spencer Asah was a traditional singer and dancer and active in Oklahoma's powwow circuit. He died in 1954.[4]

Notes

1. ^ Lester, 26
2. ^ a b c Pochoir prints of ledger drawings by the Kiowa Five, 1929. Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. (retrieved 24 April 2009)
3. ^ Lester, 27
4. ^ Wyckoff, 65

References

* Lester, Patrick D. The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. ISBN 0806199369.
* Lydia L. Wyckoff, ed. Visions and voices : Native American painting from the Philbrook Museum of Art. Tulsa, OK: Philbrook Museum of Art, 1996. ISBN 0-86659-013-7

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