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Spencer Asah (c. 1906–1956) was a Kiowa painter and a member of the Kiowa Six from Oklahoma.

Early life

Spencer Asah was born in 1906 in Carnegie, Oklahoma. His Kiowa name was Lallo (Little Boy). His father was a buffalo medicine man. Asah's father provided him with extensive cultural information that he later used in his art.

Asah attended St. Patrick's Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, where he received his first art instruction from Sister Olivia Taylor, a Choctaw nun. Government field matron Susie 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, in which they were coached and encouraged by Edith Mahier.

Kiowa Six

The Kiowa Six, included five artists: Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky Kaulaity, 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, while Auchiah joined the group that year.

In 1928, the Kiowa Six had their major breakthrough into the 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 print artists' paintings, to be published in France. Towards the late 1920s, their critically acclaimed watercolor art works were being shown throughout the United States and Europe.

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

Later life

Spencer Asah was a traditional singer and dancer who was active in Oklahoma's powwow circuit. Asah married Ida, a Comanche woman, with whom he had three children. He died in 1954.

See also

• List of Native American artists
• Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas

Notes

1. Lester, 26
2. ^ Pochoir prints of ledger drawings by the Kiowa Five, 1929. Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. (retrieved 24 April 2009)
3. Campbell, Isabel (1928). "With Southwestern Artists: All Indians have Six Fingers". Southwest Review. 14 (3). Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University: 360–369. ISSN 0038-4712. JSTOR 43466014.
4. Johansen, Bruce E. (1997). Grinde Jr., Donald A. (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Native American Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 16. ISBN 0-8050-3270-3.
5. Lester, 27
6. Johansen, Bruce E. (1997). The Encyclopedia of Native American Biography. New York: Henry Holt and Company. p. 16. ISBN 0-8050-3270-3.
7. Wyckoff, 65

References

• Lester, Patrick D. The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. ISBN 0-8061-9936-9.
• 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

External links

• Spencer Asah, article from the Oklahoma Historical Society
• Jacobson House Native Art Center: About the Kiowa Six

• Kiowa male artists
• Kiowa painters
• Painters from Oklahoma
• People from Carnegie, Oklahoma
• 20th-century births
• 1954 deaths
• People from Norman, Oklahoma
• People from Anadarko, Oklahoma