Ceremonial Dance

Ceremonial Dance is a celebration of the hunt. The central figure, who has a buffalo painted on his back, is seated while others dance around him, creating a composition resembling a frieze.

Stephen Mopope, also known as Qued Koi (Painted Robe), was born near Medicine Park, Oklahoma, in 1900 and attended St. Patrick’s Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Mopope, as well as a number of the other artists making up the group of in-fact six artists known as the Kiowa Five, attended the school where they were taught art by Sister Mary Olivia Taylor, a Choctaw nun. Mrs. Willie Baze Lane, an artist from Chickasha, Oklahoma, also provided art lessons to the young students.

The six artists eventually studied art at the University of Oklahoma under the instruction of Dr. Oscar Jacobson and Dr. Edith Mahier. Although the six were not officially enrolled at the university, Jacobson advised the artists and coordinated an exhibition for them at the First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1928 and the publishing of a portfolio of their paintings in France in 1929.