Fritz Scholder Lithograph

Fritz Scholder was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, on October 6, 1937. Scholder was a prominent Indian portrait, figure and genre painter in Arizona. His father was part Indian and Fritz Scholder chose to focus his artwork on this part of his lineage and to express both an appreciation and disdain for Indian customs, traditions and daily existence. In his childhood, where he was the fifth sibling in a primarily German family, he showed a passion for collecting, which has dominated his largely autobiographical art. He studied at the University of Kansas, Wisconsin State University and with Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento College in California. He earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona. A long-time resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, he has filled several artist-in-residence positions including Dartmouth College and the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute. In his work, he frequently showed the harsh, realistic side of Indians' lives and deaths including the effects of alcohol and other dissipations, but some of his depictions are humorous such as Indians on horseback carrying umbrellas. His brush-work is generally swift, and the tone often somber and surreal. A major influence on his work was the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon, from whom Scholder adapted ironic distortions into his canvases. In Scottsdale, he lived in an adobe-walled oasis of palm trees and oleander, amid skulls and skeletons. In the garden, several of Mr. Scholder's sculptures feature skull-like heads. In the library, an 18th-century skull engraved with witchcraft symbols shared shelf space with books printed before 1500. And the porch had been converted into a skull room, complete with Mexican Day of the Dead paraphernalia that spill from cabinets and rest on shelves and antique chairs. In a New York Times interview of August 12, 2001, Scholder said that despite the death-related items with which he surrounds himself, “I consider myself a natural optimist which might be surprising because I like the dark side of things. That's simply because of intellectual curiosity. I celebrate each day. I truly wake up happy every morning”. In appearance, he was rather a heavy set with shoulder-length hair and a radiant smile. He was shy and idiosyncratic including the driving of a gold 1979 Rolls-Royce fitted with tinted windows. His career includes etchings, aquatints, lithographs, monotypes, photographs, collages, sculptures and mixed media, but he is best known for his paintings. He was married to Lisa Markgraf Fisher and had one son. In his artwork, death had been a constant preoccupation for Scholder. He said, “Death is completely fearful, terrible violence that intrudes into what people believe. It's not what I want to think about, but it's there and is either the worst practical joke in the creation or the fault of whoever made all this up”. Fritz Scholder died February 10, 2005, at age 67 in Scottsdale, and a memorial service was held at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

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