| Dennos Museum Center > Exhibitions > Traveling Exhibitions | Revised 1/2/08 |
Canadian Woodland Indian Art
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In the early 1960s, Canadian Aboriginal art finally
gained acceptance in the Euro-Western canon, after a long history
of being regarded as craft or artifact. It was at this time that young
Native Canadian artists from the Great Lakes regions banded together
to form a unique style that came to be known as the Woodland or Anishinabe
style of painting. Members of this group include Norval Morrisseau,
Carl Ray, Roy Thomas and Sam Ash, Jackson Beardy, Daphne Odjig among
others. The best-known of the group is undoubtedly Norval Morrisseau,
who passed away in December 2007, and is often referred to as the
father of the Woodland School.
The Woodland Painters were noted for the outline of the figure and the content of First Nations beliefs. Morrisseau's original conception of the Woodland style pinpoints the geography from which he worked - north of Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada. Yet his work and his influence circled down into and through the United States to meet the influence of The Six Nations Artists - Iroquois, Mohawk, Senecan, Cayugan, Oneidan. In 1963, the first professional exhibition of Woodland Art was opened in Toronto at the Jack Pollock Gallery. These artists are now exhibit nationally and internationally: from Santa Fe and Minneapolis, to Toronto, Sao Paulo, and Munich among other places. In the mid 1970s Northwestern Michigan College exhibited the print
work of many of the Woodland artists from Great Grassland Graphics.
During this time Bernie Rink, then Director of the Osterlin Library
acquired about 100 works for the College art collection making it
the second largest segment of the museum's art collection. |
