Provenance
Frame/Craft Fine Art Gallery, Edmonton;
Private collection, Calgary;
Sale of Hodgins Art Auctions, 2010, lot 351;
Private collection, Calgary
Morrisseau is hailed as the “Picasso of the North”, and in his own right contributed immensely to abstract art in Canada. He was a leading figure in Contemporary Indigenous art during his lifetime, and laid the foundations for the Woodland school of art. Morriseau was born and raised in Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek, an Ojibwa First Nation near Thunder Bay, Ontario, and his work sought influence from his cultural heritage, spiritual themes, and as his career progressed, his personal history. In many of his works, he depicts the relationships and connection between adults and children, and the passage of knowledge and history through family. In Native Communication, we see the figures, perhaps a father and child or perhaps an older and younger version of one person, connected, as the child seems to reflect the beginnings of the same geometric patterns we see fully established in the elder figure.
Norval Morrisseau, artist (b at Sand Point Reserve, near Beardmore, Ont 14 Mar 1932; d at Toronto 4 Dec 2007). Norval Morrisseau was a self-taught artist of Ojibwa ancestry (his Ojibwa name, which appears in syllabics on his paintings, means “Copper Thunderbird”) and he originated the pictographic style, or what…
Norval Morrisseau, artist (b at Sand Point Reserve, near Beardmore, Ont 14 Mar 1932; d at Toronto 4 Dec 2007). Norval Morrisseau was a self-taught artist of Ojibwa ancestry (his Ojibwa name, which appears in syllabics on his paintings, means “Copper Thunderbird”) and he originated the pictographic style, or what is referred to as “Woodland Indian art,””legend painting” or “x-ray art.” This style is a fusion of European easel painting with Ojibwa Midewiwin Society scrolls and pictography of rock paintings. Introduced to the Canadian public at the Pollock Gallery, Toronto, in 1962, Morrisseau was the first artist of First Nations ancestry to break through the Canadian professional white-art barrier. Throughout the 1960s Morrisseau’s pictographic style grew in popularity and was often perceived by other Cree, Ojibwa and Ottawa artists as a tribal style, to be adapted for their own cultural needs. By the 1970s younger artists painted exclusively in his genre.
For Morrisseau, the 1970s were a time of struggle to reconcile traditional Midewiwin and Christian religions in his art and personal life. Combining his Ojibwa heritage, instilled in him by his maternal grandfather, Moses Nanakonagos, with the religion Eckankar, his works during the 1980s became more focused on spiritual elements. Morrisseau continues to study Ojibwa shamanistic practices, which he believes elevate his work to a higher plane of understanding.
Norval Morrisseau was presented with the Order of Canada in 1978. In 2006, the National Gallery of Canada mounted Norval Morrisseau – Shaman Artist, a travelling retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work.
