Apache sculptor Allan Houser, who was honored by President Bush and presented a peace sculpture to Hillary Rodham Clinton this year, has died at 80.
Houser died of colon cancer Monday night at his Santa Fe home.Houser's work, portraying mother and child, warriors on horseback, Apache fire dancers and other themes, has been shown in museums and galleries around the world. He encompassed styles from dramatic realism to abstract geometric forms. Bush presented him with the National Medal of Arts in 1992.
Experimentation was crucial to his work, Houser said in a 1991 interview.
"It's what keeps you alive. I'd get bored if I did the same thing all the time," he said.
Ellen Landis, curator of art at The Albuquerque Museum, called Houser's death a universal loss: "He was the leading Indian sculptor, but the loss goes far beyond ethnicity."
Houser's work is in the British Royal Collection, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.