Linda Lomahaftewa

Linda Lomahaftewa
Avannupo · Public domain · source
Name	Linda Lomahaftewa
Birth date	1947
Birth place	Winslow, Arizona, United States
Nationality	Hopi, African-American
Known for	Painting, printmaking, mixed media
Training	Institute of American Indian Arts, Otis Art Institute

Linda Lomahaftewa Linda Lomahaftewa (born 1947) is a Hopi and Choctaw printmaker, painter, and multimedia artist known for lyrical abstractions that reference Native American traditions, Southwestern landscapes, and contemporary art discourse. Her work bridges institutions and communities such as the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Early life and background

Lomahaftewa was born in Winslow, Arizona, and raised amid Hopi and Choctaw cultural contexts, with family ties to tribal communities, ceremonial life, and the Navajo Nation, interacting with figures and places like the Hopi Mesa, the Navajo Nation Council, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her upbringing involved relocations that placed her near institutions and events such as the Indian boarding school system, the American Indian Movement, the National Congress of American Indians, and regional reservations, connecting her life to broader histories including the Trail of Tears and the Indian Relocation Act. Early exposure to Southwestern sites—Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Petrified Forest, and Route 66—shaped her sense of landscape alongside encounters with artists and activists linked to the Santa Fe art scene, the Taos Pueblo community, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and notable curators at the Museum of New Mexico and the Heard Museum.

Education and artistic training

Lomahaftewa studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where faculty and visiting artists associated with the Art Students League, the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the Otis Art Institute influenced her. She later attended the San Francisco Art Institute and Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, intersecting with faculty and alumni networks connected to the California Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale School of Art. During training she encountered mentors and contemporaries linked to names such as Fritz Scholder, T.C. Cannon, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, George Morrison, and Allan Houser, and institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Career and major works

Lomahaftewa’s career spans printmaking, painting, collage, and public art commissions that have been displayed at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art. Major works and projects align her with print studios and programs such as Tamarind Institute, Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., and the Native American Rights Fund while connecting to exhibitions and initiatives organized by the Venice Biennale, Documenta, the American Federation of Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her public art commissions relate to civic sites and cultural centers including the Los Angeles Metro, the Albuquerque International Sunport, the Heard Museum, the Santa Fe Opera, and the University of New Mexico. Collaborative and editorial efforts link her to journals and projects associated with Native American Arts Magazine, Art in America, Hyperallergic, The New Yorker art pages, and academic programs at Columbia University and the University of California.

Style, themes, and influences

Her visual language synthesizes abstraction and narrative, drawing on motifs from Hopi katsina imagery, Choctaw beadwork patterns, Pueblo pottery, and Southwestern motifs observed at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Zuni Pueblo, while dialoguing with modernists and contemporaries such as Paul Klee, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, and Helen Frankenthaler. Themes in her oeuvre intersect with indigenous sovereignty movements, civil rights histories including the American Indian Movement and figures like Vine Deloria Jr., Native American literature such as works by N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko, and cultural institutions like the National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Institution. Her practice reflects influences from printmaking pioneers and teachers associated with Stanley William Hayter, Jun Kaneko, Richard Diebenkorn, and prints programs at the Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and the University of New Mexico.

Exhibitions and collections

Lomahaftewa’s work has been included in group and solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, the Wheelwright Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the British Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the New Museum. Collections holding her work include those of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Denver Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and university collections at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of New Mexico. Exhibitions and catalogues link her to curators and programs at the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery.

Awards and recognition

Her honors and grants include support from the National Endowment for the Arts, fellowships connected to the MacArthur Foundation community of artists, awards and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and recognition from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Institutional acknowledgments tie her to lifetime achievement awards and retrospectives organized by the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Heard Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and statewide arts councils such as the New Mexico Arts Division and the California Arts Council.

Category:Native American artists Category:20th-century American painters Category:21st-century American painters Category:Hopi people Category:Choctaw people