Description:
Tempera on paper. Signed l.r.: Pepion Double Shields, Stamped u.r.: PLANCHE 27.
From: American Indian Painters, Vol. 1, p. 17: Victor Pepion's racial, educational, and artistic background is different from that of the artists of New Mexico and Oklahoma. He was born on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, descendant of the last hereditary chief of the Blackfeet. Somewhere along the line, Victor acquired one-fourth French blood. Victor received his first instruction in art from Winold Reiss, who painted lovely Blackfeet character portraits. As a result of this trial study, his uncle Lone Wolf encouraged the young man to enter an art school. Victor went to Los Angeles, where he did life drawing for a season. He also appeared as an actor in the MGM movie, "Northwest Passage." In 1940, Victor, with a few other Indians, decorated the buildings at the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota. He was transferred to the Fort Sill Indian School in Oklahoma to do a fresco. Later he was chosen to do another big mural job in the lobby of the Northern Plains Indian Museum at Browning, Montana. He did this job so satisfactorily that it placed him in line for a teaching position at an Indian boarding school. There he performed almost too successfully. Victor was an enthusiastic teacher and young Indians flocked to his classes in such numbers that some of the other teachers became not so happy. However, this pleasant state of affairs was suddenly terminated. Uncle Sam needed men to do some work. Victor entered the Army Air Forces. He was in the invasion of France. In 1945 he was back in England, as a student in the army university at Shrivenham, where he studied oil, watercolors, and sculpture. In November, 1945, he enrolled in the University of Oklahoma, School of Art. In 1946-47 he studied anthropology and art at the University of New Mexico. Naturally, with such a varied artistic training, Pepion's work is based more on the orthodox white tradition with all its complicated formulae than the simple and direct art of the Indian. The small egg tempera here reproduced represents Victor's latest experiments in this medium. The subject reveals his interest in contemporary life. (Collection, University of Oklahoma)