Linda Lomahaftewa: An Overnight Success, Sixty Years in the Making

On a recent trip to New York, I visited the Whitney Museum of American Art where I was able to see Sixties Surrealism, a show featuring work from the 1960s that reflects a Surreal style including work by Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw, b. 1947). For the curators, the show highlights how artists “chaotic id of the decade” in terms of content and style. In the company of artists including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, and Jasper Johns, Linda’s bright painting Untitled Woman's Faces from the 1960s reminds visitors that Native artists, including Lomahaftewa, Fritz Scholder, and Oscar Howe, played an important role as emblems of identity and self-determination, especially as a way to see history from different perspectives. Lomahaftewa’s piece melds women’s faces into an open landscape, suggesting the connection between the figures and terrain.