Paul Coze

Born in Beirut, Ottoman Empire of a French engineer father, Edouard Coze, and a mother, Sonia/Sofia Dabija, a Russian princess with lineage from old Serbian royalty, Coze grew acquainted with riding and roping as a young man. On his going to France, as a teenager he became co-founder of Scouts de France, the first French Scout program. Coze was the first French Wood Badger and a Chevalier de France, and served as editor of the Scout magazine.

During years of art training, an increasing fascination with cowboys and Native Americans led to four museum-sponsored anthropological expeditions to western Canada (1928-1932) and a book, Mœurs et histoire des Peaux-Rouges (1928, with Rene Thévenin), still in print as a standard work. Many of Coze's hundreds of collected artifacts now reside at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Coze moved to the United States circa 1938, in Pasadena, California since 1942, spending two years producing major educational murals at Mesa Verde National Park.

He acted as a technical adviser on the Hollywood films Uncertain Glory (1944) and Rogues' Regiment (1948) where he also had a small role. Coze acted as a researcher on The Razor's Edge (1946).[1]

Settling in Phoenix, Arizona full-time in 1951, he founded an art school and created nine major pieces of public art in the city, including large multimedia installations at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum and other civic landmarks, most with Native themes.[2] In 1971, Coze created a fountain for the Phoenix Indian Hospital.[2]

Coze provided artistic designs for Arizona's celebration of 50 years of statehood, The Arizona Story, in 1962.

He died in 1974 and is buried in St. Francis Catholic Cemetery in Phoenix.

Paul Cozé on horseback with lasso

He published seven books and numerous articles for Arizona Highways magazine, was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1954, and was French consul for Phoenix for decades.[6]

The Royal Alberta Museum in Canada hold the Paul Coze Ethnographic Collection, the Paul Coze Fonds contains 50 of his photographic negatives. The negatives were received from John P. Flaherty in 1994. The images document the Cree, Métis and Stoney Plain peoples in Saskatchewan and Alberta.[9] During his lifetime, Coze amassed a private collection of ethnographic objects and materials from the First Nations people of the Canadian Plains and Subarctic regions. The Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton holds 122 objects from Coze's personal collection including horse gear, model canoes, games, and garments. The Ethnology collection also includes 119 of Coze's paintings, 58 of his photographs and props from productions of Cercle Wakanda. Additionally the museum holdsan archive of his writings and additional objects from Aboriginal life and objects that reflect attitudes towards Aboriginal peoples through the lens of Europeans.[9]

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  Dressing a horse for a ceremony, Nakoda summer camp near Banff, Alberta
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  Cree women working on a large moose hide, Waterhen River area, Northern Saskatchewan
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  Women Arranging Their Tepees, Southern Saskatchewan
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  Unidentified Blackfoot woman with hide-scraping tools, Alberta
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  Dancers
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  Circular Wood Frame Structure Used on Ceremonial Occasions, Waterhen River, Northern Saskatchewan
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  Ashatcheway, a Cree Medicine Man smoking an effigy pipe, Waterhen River Area, Northern Saskatchewan

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Paul Coze.

• short online biography from the Royal Alberta Museum
• article on paul coze in Phoenix Magazine
• Brief biography at AZCentral
• Souvenirs personnels de Paul Coze (in French)