Jean LaMarr

Early life Born in Susanville, California, Jean LaMarr was given the name Pahime Gutne (Purple Flower Girl). Her family was poor. She created her first mural when she was in fourth grade called "Sir Frances Drake Christianizing the Indians" and the experience was meaningful to her. Lamarr was attending school in San Jose during the Occupation of Alcatraz and she supported that movement. She then joined a group of artists that protested discrimination. She is drawn to the democratic quality of both media and has said, "I believe that art is for everyone. Art shouldn't be just for the museums or the rich, it should be for everyone and in everybody's home. That is why I started doing murals. That is also why I got into printmaking because it was a way of gathering minds, a way of raising consciousness about what is happening with the Earth, Indian rights, and the Indian woman."

Curator Jan Rindfleisch writes of LaMarr: "Jean LaMarr has honored and supported tribal communities for four decades. From drawing Indigenous youth during the 1960s to creating a compelling series of Bear Dance posters years later, her pictorial narrative counters the long-standing erasure of Indigenous presence. She often focused on women, celebrating and documenting their history and survival."

LaMarr is the founder of the Native American Graphic Workshop.

In 2022, the California Society of Printmakers recognized LaMarr's contributions to the field of fine art printmaking with a lifetime, honorary membership.

In 2022, the Nevada Museum of Art launched The Art of Jean LaMarr, a retrospective of more than 60 of her works. This traveled to the Boise Art Museum in Idaho Debra Harry, (Kooyooe Tukadu Numu from Pyramid Lake) who is also a professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Nevada has written of the work in the exhibition: “Jean LaMarr speaks from a place of fierce pride in her indigeneity, and a willingness to challenge the erasure and structural racism that Indigenous Peoples face in their lives. Her work has that razor-sharp political commentary, yet can transmit the softness and beauty of our cultures, particularly of Indigenous women.” The Navajo Nation ruled that he must be buried in Arizona in the community in which he was born, but LaMarr argued that he wished to be buried in their Susanville community.

LaMarr passed away on August 1, 2026 at her home in Susanville, California. 500 Years of Resistance: Through Women's Eyes, screenprint, 1992, printed with René Castro at Mission Gráfica

Murals Our Ancestors, Our Future, mural, Lasson Street, Susanville 1995: Violetly Volatile: Selected Mixed Media Works from 1974 to 1995 (1995), solo retrospective at C.N. Gorman Museum, Davis, California 2019–20: When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, curated by Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu, 1937–2019) 2022–23 The Art of Jean LaMarr, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; Boise Art Museum, Boise; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM Princess Pale Moon exhibition, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona