RICHARD WEST

- RICHARD “DICK” WEST (WA-PAH NAH-YAH) -

Southern Cheyenne, 1912-1996

Richard “Dick” West (Wah-pah-nah-yah, or “Lightfooted Runner”) was a Southern Cheyenne painter, muralist, educator, and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Native American art. Born near the Darlington Agency in Oklahoma, he studied at Haskell Institute, Bacone College, and the University of Oklahoma, where he earned both BFA and MFA degrees. Drawing upon Cheyenne visual traditions while embracing modernist approaches, West created works that explored Indigenous history, ceremony, spirituality, and cultural continuity. His later abstract paintings helped challenge expectations that Native American art should be confined to traditional or ethnographic forms.

West’s impact extended well beyond his own artistic practice. From 1947 to 1970, he served as director of the Art Department at Bacone College, where he helped define the influential Bacone School of Native painting and mentored generations of Indigenous artists. He advocated for Native artists to engage with contemporary art movements while maintaining strong cultural foundations, and his leadership helped shape the development of modern Native American art in the United States. Throughout his career, he received numerous honors recognizing both his artistic achievements and his contributions to arts education.

West exhibited widely during his lifetime, with works shown at institutions including the Denver Art Museum, Joslyn Art Museum, Heard Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, and the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial. His work has also been featured in major posthumous exhibitions such as Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting and Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s–1970s. Today, his paintings are held in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Denver Art Museum, Gilcrease Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Joslyn Art Museum, and the Southern Plains Indian Museum, among others, underscoring his lasting legacy as both an artist and educator.