Harry Fonseca

Who was Harry Fonseca?

Harry Eugene Fonseca was an American artist. He was born in Sacramento, California.

Harry Fonseca was of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portuguese heritage. He studied art at California State University Sacramento with Native-American artist Frank LaPena but quit the program to pursue his own vision of art. His earliest pieces drew from his Maidu heritage. He was influenced by basketry designs, dance regalia, and by his participation as a traditional dancer. Further, the creation myth of his people, as recounted by his uncle, Henry Azbill, became the source of a major 1977 work, Creation Story, which he would paint in many versions during his career.

Fonseca began his popular Coyote series in 1979. In it he places Coyote, the trickster, in non-traditional settings. As an example, his Coyote in the Mission depicts Coyote dressed in a leather jacket with many zippers and green hightop sneakers standing against a graffiti covered brick wall in San Francisco's Mission district. Another image has Rousseauesque Coyote sitting in a Paris cafe.

In 1981 he illustrated a book, Legends of the Yosemite Miwok, compiled by Frank LaPena and Craig Bates.