signed lower right; signed, titled and dated 2014 on the reverse
30 × 23 in (76.2 × 58.4 cm) (sheet)
Private Collection, Alberta
Private Collection, Toronto
Alex Janvier, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 25 November 2016-17 April 2017
Greg A. Hill, Alex Janvier, Ottawa, 2016, page 18, reproduced page 181, fig. 234
Alex Janvier was a pioneering Canadian Indigenous artist of Dene Suline and Saulteaux heritage, widely recognized for helping establish contemporary Indigenous art as a significant part of Canada’s modern art history. He was born in Cold Lake First Nations territory in northern Alberta and developed a distinctive abstract style combining Indigenous cultural traditions with modernist influences. The intricate beadwork and birch bark basketry created by his mother and other family members greatly influenced the artist's development. Janvier's striking and unique paintings blend Denesuline imagery with Western modernist techniques, including automatic painting and abstraction.
Janvier’s abstractions possess an endless fluidity, while seeming on the verge of settling into recognizable images. In Watermelon, 2014, Alex Janvier brings his signature curvilinear abstraction to a fresh and unexpected palette of pink, green and white. Flowing lines and organic forms animate the composition, while the colours evoke the fruit suggested by the title. Curator Greg Hill noted, “Spirituality is also evident in Janvier’s work in subtle ways, such as in his characteristic sinuous lines. The lines... are reminiscent of the graceful and ever–changing movement of tobacco smoke and steam intermixing in shafts of light, or the dance of the aurora borealis spanning an entire night sky, the movement and patterns transcribed to feelings, colour and paint.”
