Morrisseau, Norval 1932-2007 (Copper Thunderbird, Jean-Baptiste Norman Henry Morrisseau)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 14, 1932, at Sand Point Reserve, Ontario, Canada; died of complications from Parkinson's disease, December 4, 2007, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Artist, painter, printmaker, illustrator, shaman, storyteller, and author. Morrisseau was recognized as one of Canada's greatest artists, decorated as a member of the Order of Canada in 1978 and recipient of the treasured eagle feather of the Assembly of First Nations in 1995. Morrisseau was born on an Ojibwa reservation in northern Ontario and raised traditionally by his mother's parents. Like many of the First Nations people, he spent much of his life in poverty—even after his artwork made him famous—and experienced turbulent bouts of substance abuse. His brilliant paintings lit up the North American art world from the moment of his first exhibition in 1962 until 2002, when ill health forced his retirement. Morrisseau, who by the 1960s was also known as Copper Thunderbird and who often described himself as a shaman, painted thousands of images in a style that seemed to bridge the spaces and ages between ancient Native pictographs and the work of modern abstract expressionists. Under his brush, two-dimensional figures in flat primary colors nonetheless burst into life, often reflecting the dissonance and fury that he had observed in his own life. His style defied classification according to existing genres and came to be known as Legend or Woodland. Morrisseau's work was shown around the world, including a traveling retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 2006, which moved to the United States the following year to the George Gustav Heye Center of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. Morrisseau was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2005. His work appeared in several books, including Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways (1969) and Return to the House of Invention (2005). Morrisseau was credited as both storyteller and illustrator of Legends of My People: The Great Ojibway (1965) and as a coauthor of Norval Morrisseau: Travels to the House of Invention (1997).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

McLuhan, Elizabeth, and Tom Hill, Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers, Methuen (New York, NY), 1984.

Morrisseau, Norval, and Donald Robinson, Travels to the House of Invention, Key Porter Books (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.

Notable Native Americans, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

St. James Guide to Native North-American Artists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Sinclair, Lister, and Jack Pollock, The Art of Norval Morrisseau, Methuen (New York, NY), 1979.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, December 8, 2007, p. B13.

Times (London, England), January 16, 2008, p. 54.