Norval Morrisseau (Anishinaabe), Untitled (Snakes), about 1970. Acrylic on paper board; 40 x 32 in. Denver Art Museum: Native Arts acquisition fund, 2010.441. © Norval Morrisseau Estate

height: 40 in, 101.6000 cm; width: 32 in, 81.2800 cm; frame height: 46 3/16 in, 117.3163 cm; frame width: 38 in, 96.5200 cm; frame depth: 1 1/2 in, 3.8100 cm

Native Arts

Indigenous Arts of North America

This object is currently on view

Norval Morrisseau is arguably Canada’s best-known aboriginal artist, with a career that spanned five decades. In the late 1950s he founded a completely new art movement, called the Woodland or Anishnaabe school of painting, which is characterized by its “x-ray” forms of people and animals with heavy black lines surrounding bright, flat fields of color.