Chief Terry Saul (Tabaksi) (1921 - 1976)

Landscape with Bridge (Untitled), c. 1940s, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 19 x 26 ¼ inches

$7,500

Chief Carl Terry Saul, known as Chief Terry Saul or Tabaksi (which means “Ember of Fire”), was a celebrated and award-winning Native American artist of Choctaw and Chickasaw heritage. “Chief” was his given name and not a title or indication of rank or status. Born in Sardis, Oklahoma, and raised in Bartlesville, he demonstrated early artistic talent in high school and college at Bacone College where he studied under renowned Native artists Acee Blue Eagle and Woody Crumbo. In 1940, the same year as his graduation from Bacone, Saul married Anna Laura Peterson, whose mother was Cherokee, and whose father was a Danish immigrant to the United States. They had two children, William Terry (b. 1943) and John Bendixen (b. 1949).

Saul served for five years during and after World War II as part of the 45th Infantry Division, reaching the rank of first sergeant. After the war, he used the GI Bill to study art at the University of Oklahoma, earning a BFA in 1948 and MFA in 1949. Saul was the first Native American to receive an MFA in painting from any US institution. Several years later, Saul enrolled at New York’s Art Students League from 1951 through 1952. After leaving the League, Saul lived in New Jersey and worked as a technical illustrator and staff artist for the Curtis-Wright Co. until 1955. Returning to Oklahoma, Saul lived in Bartlesville and worked as a commercial artist at Phillips Petroleum while continuing his fine art painting career. He later served as director of Bacone College’s art department from 1970 through 1976, shaping a next generation of Native American artists and teaching figures such as Joan Brown.

Early in his career in the 1940s when he likely created the present work, Saul’s oil paintings fit squarely into American modernist aesthetics combing elements of Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and contemporary design and graphic art. Saul’s work included modernist depictions of his native Oklahoma landscape as well as self-portraits and portraits of his wife, Anna Laura. Saul was well regarded for his ability to combine abstract designs and patterns from Native American material culture such as bead and quillwork with the teachings of Western modernism in what one scholar has called a “sophisticated legacy of adaption.” His practice was one of claiming agency over a unique combination of influences which defied then current expectations of what Native American art was supposed to depict and look like. He refused to be told what to paint and how to paint it.  

Late in the 1940s and early 1950s, Saul frequently drew on more stylized figures and ceremonial scenes from his Native culture —Stickball, Eagle Dancer, Corn Grinder—rendered in vivid colors, flat planes, and simplified forms evocative of graphic art. He described his methodology: “All my paintings have Indian themes – in contemporary style…This is a combination of line, design and color. It is not exactly like traditional ‘calendar’ Indian art but not too radical, either.” Saul also produced murals, commercial art, illustrations, and worked in watercolor and casein—especially depicting Plains tribal customs. His work acted as a visual preservation of Choctaw and Chickasaw heritage, often capturing tribal ceremonies grounded in oral history.

Saul first achieved national recognition in 1947 when his work was published in Art Digest and in 1948 when it was selected for inclusion at the first national exhibition of student art at the Addison Museum in Andover, Massachusetts.  The same year, he was included in OU’s “Advancing American Art” exhibition. By the following year, Saul became a regular contributor to Philbrook Museum of Art’s annual exhibitions of Native American painting, where he won a third-place purchase prize in 1949.  Five years later in 1954, Saul was selected as one of the artists for the Philbrook’s major exhibition of Native American painting which traveled across the United States and Latin America. During the mid-1950s, he exhibited at the Intertribal Festival at Gallup, New Mexico, where he won awards in the Woodland Division. In 1959, Saul was honored with a solo exhibition at the No Man’s Land Historical Museum. The Union National Bank commissioned Saul to complete murals in the Bartlesville branch. During his life, Saul’s paintings were displayed at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC and the Oklahoma Governor’s Mansion. His work was also exhibited at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Art, DeYoung Museum, San Francisco, New Jersey State Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Art Students League in New York and dozens of other museums and institutions.

Saul was featured posthumously in the influential 2022 exhibition “Ascendant: Expressions of Self‑Determination” at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, which highlighted three Native modernist artists from Oklahoma - Walter “Dick” West and Oscar Howe in addition to Saul. The exhibition reframed these artists not merely as Indigenous painters, but as Modernist artists in their own right—melding narratives of colonial resistance with avant‑garde artistry. It highlighted their position as both cultural preservers and modernist innovators, challenging conventional art historical hierarchies. This exhibition also marked a major step in recognizing Second-Generation Native Modernists. The show emphasized these artists as educators and mentors, including Saul’s role at Bacone College—a legacy that shaped later generations of Indigenous artists.

Saul’s artwork is in prominent public institutions, including the Gilcrease Museum — home to his casein painting Choctaw Ball Player (c. 1958), Philbrook Museum of Art — featuring key works like Choctaw Sick Dance, reflecting his emphasis on tribal traditions, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma — preserving pieces such as Salvage (c. 1948), Bureau of Indian Affairs Museum — which holds watercolors like Chickasaw Earth Woman and Stickball Player, and the Denver Art Museum – Choctaw Ball Dancers (1950).

Chief Terry Saul passed away in 1976 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, but left a groundbreaking legacy as a pioneering modern Native American artist and educator. Through his teaching and art, he upheld Choctaw and Chickasaw traditions while innovatively bridging them with modern aesthetics—an influence seen in later generations of Indigenous artists. Saul is listed with a half page entry in Who Was Who in American Art.