DELMAR BONI

– DELMAR BONI –

Apache, 1948—

The Apache artist Delmar Boni was born in 1948 in Safford, Arizona. He attended Fort Thomas High School in Arizona and received an A.F.A degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and a bachelor's degree in art education from the College of Santa Fe. In 1973 he was commissioned to do a painting for the collection of the American Junior College Board in Washington, D.C. In 1975 he received the Purchase Award at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa and the Honors Award from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and in 1977 he won the Martin Luther King Award.

The following year, he became a member of the Board of Directors for the Southwestern Association of Indian Affairs, Santa Fe. Boni's work has been shown at the Scottsdale National Indian Art Exhibition, the Scottsdale Artist League Show, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Philbrook Indian Art Center, the New Mexico Biennial Show, the 1977 Santa Fe Armory Show, and in the 1978 Institute of American Indian Arts Alumni Invitational Exhibit. His work is regularly on exhibition at Los Llanos Gallery in Santa Fe. In 1976 Delmar Boni founded in Santa Fe the St. Catherine's Mountain Spirit Dance Group, which he sponsored at St. Catherine's Indian School until 1978. He presently makes his home on the Gila River Indian Reservation near Phoenix, Arizona, and is working toward a master's degree in Indian Education. "I feel that my paintings are influenced mostly by my Apache way of life, and what I've learned in art school."

Biography excerpt from “The Sweetgrass Lives On: Fifty Contemporary North American Indian Artists” by Jamake Highwater.