Norval MorrisseauLife & Work

“When Norval Morrisseau arrived on the Canadian art scene in 1962, he was something of an anomaly. At a time when enforced assimilation was national policy and First Nations had only recently been accorded the right to vote in federal elections, few Indigenous people made art that was viewed as contemporary within the narrow framework accepted in mainstream cultural circles.”

– Carmen Robertson

Norval Morrisseau: Life & Work describes how the artist worked outside the established traditions of European visual culture. He defied categorization and challenged conventional understandings of Indigenous art. Although during his lifetime the media judged him harshly for his alcoholism and his traditional beliefs, Morrisseau succeeded in raising awareness of Indigenous aesthetics and cultural narratives as he developed an artistic vocabulary that inspired a new Canadian art movement. Carmen Robertson reveals that, at a time when most Canadian artists were experimenting with the techniques of modern abstraction, Norval Morrisseau rejected those contemporary artistic trends in favour of a visual aesthetic that drew most directly from Anishinaabe cultural sources. This book considers the plight of an artist who, in the face of intense discrimination, created a style that was all his own.

Copyright Information

Banner Image: Norval Morrisseau, Observations of the Astral World, c. 1994. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (no. 41338).