In this monumental circular painting, Fritz Scholder reclaims the visual language of the Native American shield and repositions it within the scale and urgency of contemporary art. Set against a stark, gestural white ground, a massive buffalo skull occupies the center—an image historically painted onto shields as a symbol of protection, sustenance, and spiritual power. Scholder amplifies this form to an uncommon scale, pushing the shield motif into the realm of Pop-inflected spectacle and confrontation.

A violent splatter of red paint cuts diagonally across the surface, bleeding into the skull itself and disrupting any sense of reverence or distance. The gesture injects immediacy and unease, where tradition collides with modernism, ritual with rupture. Widely regarded as one of the most important figures in postwar American art and the pivotal force of the American Indian Art Movement, Scholder brought Native experience into the global contemporary art conversation. This work stands among his most compelling shield paintings—an homage to Indigenous visual systems and a stark reckoning with the bloodshed and unresolved histories bound to them.