Born on July 26, 1931, in Chinle, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, R.C. Gorman is the son of Carl Nelson Gorman, one of the famous Navajo Code Talkers and a famous Navajo sculptor and painter. R.C. Gorman was encouraged as a young man to become an artist like his father. As a boy, he herded sheep with his grandmother in Canyon de Chelly. After graduating from high school, he studied art at Northern Arizona University and San Francisco State University. Subsequently, he was awarded a grant by the Navajo Tribal Council to study art at Mexico City College where he was deeply influenced by the work of Diego Rivera. Gorman is the most renowned of all contemporary American Indian artists. In 1973, he was honored as the only living artist to be in the "Masterworks of the American Indian" exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. In 1975, he became the first artist to be selected for a series on contemporary American Indian art at the Museum of the American Indian in New York. Gorman has also published several essays on Mexican artists, petroglyphs, and cave paintings.