Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Norval Morrisseau Blues (Part I)

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- 1980's PERIOD-

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"Black Robe Travelling", 48"x72", © 1987 Norval Morrisseau
/Click on image to Enlarge/
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"When the Jesuits came, the Indian was already around. The Indian did not understand them. He tried to understand them, what they were up to. He knew that they were going to be there for awhile. He knew how sad it was, seeing his people, how low they were put, how they had previously enjoyed living and needed to live freely again. How do we go about doing that now? We need images. We’re going to use images ourselves."
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Norval Morrisseau
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Blog Master's comment:
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"Norval Morrisseau's painting style is characterized by thick black outlines and bright colors. It is not widely known that he painted large number of canvases with thick blue outlines as in the painting presented in this posting. The "Black Robe Travelling" was one of the paintings that Norval Morrisseau painted in Thunder Bay in 1987 before leaving for Vancouver where wandering the back alleys of Gastown he ultimately met Gabor (Gabe) Vadas*."
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* - Gabor (Gabe) Vadas, who for the last 20 years of Norval Morrisseau's life functioned as Mr. Morrisseau's guardian, business manager and "adopted" (although not legally so) son.
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~ The painting in this posting has provenance leading directly to the artist: "Black Robe Travelling", 48"x72", © 1987 Norval Morrisseau /Private Collection/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This painting is really beautiful. The blue lines gives it a very powerful presence. I have seen a few of these before but none with this important subject matter. A very nice example SW,
Best Regards,

Amy Castleback