Harry Fonseca

Native American painter

Harry Eugene Fonseca (1946 – 2006) was a Nisenan Native American artist, and illustrator. He was an enrolled citizen of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.

Harry Eugene Fonseca was born on January 5, 1946, in Sacramento, California. He was Nisenan and of Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage. He and his family belongs to the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians. Fonseca's earliest pieces drew from his Nisenan heritage. The artist confronted the dark history of the California Gold Rush, where his work takes a political tone. These are small abstract paintings in which gold is the predominant color, along with traces of red which represent the blood of Native Americans shed by the gold seekers. Each painting also incorporates minerals from California's gold country. Fonseca wrote that they are "a direct reference to the physical, emotional and spiritual genocide of the native people of California". Many of these were exhibited in the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento (1992) and the Oakland Museum as part of a larger Gold Rush exhibition in 1998. He did many drawings and prints of Coyote and Rose, a female counterpart to Coyote, often depicted in a floral print dress. These became a mainstay of Santa Fe event posters. Fonseca later introduced the Coyote Koshare in several of his works. “Coyote Koshare with Watermelons” situates the Coyote in a more traditional environment, at home at the pueblo and participating in sacred ceremonies. Fonseca’s representation of the rainbow in each painting symbolizes the importance of the rainbow’s image for Pueblo tribes. The greenery which hangs around the necks of the Coyote Koshares shows their commitment to maintaining the balance with the natural world, an indication of their spiritual significance. Harry did several other series of paintings. One series painted in the 1990s was of images of Saint Francis, who appears as negative space in each painting. About the same time, he did a series of paintings of the Icarus story. Another series from 2002 was inspired by the striped patterns on early Navajo blankets. In 2003 he started to paint a series of abstract paintings of flowering tree branches, which he called collectively the Four Seasons, a small group of which were exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. Fonseca's work was part of Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–21), a survey at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center. The Autry Museum of the American West exhibited Coyote Leaves the Res: The Art of Harry Fonseca from May 19, 2019 to January 5, 2020. The museum's press release on the exhibition, included his social positionality as an artist stating, "as a gay man and a person of mixed heritage, Fonseca used his art as a vehicle for self discovery." Fonseca's artwork was showcased in numerous exhibitions at prestigious institutions, including ethnographic, historical, and natural history museums. His work was featured at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (now the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts) in Santa Fe, the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, and the Oakland Museum in California. However, despite his achievements, Fonseca faced challenges as an artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Some critics, notably John Baldessari, commented that Fonseca's location in Santa Fe limited his recognition as a serious artist, considering it a niche market. However, Fonseca remained dedicated to his artistic vision and continued to create thought provoking and impactful works

The Albuquerque Museum (Albuquerque, New Mexico), the California State Parks Central Valley Regional Indian Museum (Sacramento, California), Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, California), the Denver Art Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians & Western Art (Indianapolis, Indiana), Ethnological Museum of Berlin (Berlin), the Heard Museum (Phoenix, Arizona), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire), the Linden Museum (Stuttgart, Germany), the Monterey Fine Arts Museum (Monterey, California), the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico), the Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, California), Oguni Museum (Oguni, Japan), the Pequot Museum (Mashantucket, Connecticut), the University Art Museum (Berkeley, California), the Washington State Arts Museum (Olympia, Washington), and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (Santa Fe, New Mexico) are among the public collections holding work by Harry Fonseca.

Fonseca was diagnosed with brain cancer and hospitalized in the Veterans Administration hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in August 2006. He died there on December 28, 2006.