Bob Haozous is one of the most significant Native American sculptors of his generation, a Chiricahua Apache artist whose monumental metalwork carries forward his father Allan Houser's pioneering modernism while deploying it toward sharp political, environmental, and cultural commentary.
Bob Haozous (born April 1, 1943, Los Angeles, California) is a Chiricahua Apache sculptor enrolled in the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma. He is the son of the modernist sculptor Allan Houser (born Allan Capron Haozous, 1914–1994) and the textile artist Anna Marie Gallegos, of Navajo-Mestiza descent. After attending Utah State University, serving four years in the United States Navy aboard USS Frank Knox during the Vietnam War, and earning his BFA in sculpture at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1971, he emerged as one of the most consequential Native American sculptors of his generation. His decision to use the original Apache family name "Haozous", restoring the form anglicized to "Houser" when his father was a child in an Oklahoma Indian boarding school, has been part of his artistic and political identity from the beginning of his career.
His monumental sculpture in steel, stone, wood, and aluminum addresses Apache history, United States policy toward Indigenous peoples, environmental crisis, and institutional racism, often with sharp humor. His work is held in the British Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, among other institutions.