Buffalo Medicine Man

In 1937, American magazine declared Acee Blue Eagle the nation's "foremost living Indian artist." Blue Eagle was born thirty years earlier on the Wichita Reservation near Anadarko, Oklahoma. After earning his degree from the University of Oklahoma, he was employed by the Federal Art Project to paint murals throughout Oklahoma, and for the USS Oklahoma, which was sunk at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He later served in the US Army Air Corps. In this painting, Blue Eagle presents his traditional subject matter in dynamic repose, his chest and hips contorted to face the viewer as he turns his head and feet toward an unseen space.