Between 1914 and 1918, Walter Ufer differentiated himself artistically from other artists of the day by painting Native American subjects gazing out directly, even defiantly, at the (presumably) Euro-American viewer. Ufer’s paintings from this time are unsettling because the “gaze” emphasized that Ufer’s subjects, Pueblo Indians from Taos, New Mexico, were real people rather than romantic fictions, and that the paintings themselves were artificial spaces created by the artist.

Lecturer: James Peck, OMA executive director