AGO celebrates life of 'Indian Group of Seven' artist Daphne Odjig
CBC News | Posted: January 19, 2017 3:13 PM | Last Updated: January 19, 2017
Odjig drew inspiration from the gallery's collection during visits in the 1940s
Hundreds of family, friends and admirers gathered at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Wednesday night to celebrate the life of Daphne Odjig, the woman known as the grandmother of contemporary Indigenous art.
Odjig was born on Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island in 1919 and died in Kelowna, B.C., in October. She was 97.
She was a founding member of the "Indian Group of Seven," and her work has been displayed in galleries around the world and on Canadian postage.
In her early career, Odjig studied art in Ottawa and Sweden, but the AGO was a major source of inspiration as she developed her unmistakable, colourful style.
"She came here to AGO in 1947 and was studying all the masters: Canadian masters, as well as the European masters," said Wanda Nanibush, the gallery's assistant curator of Canadian and Indigenous art.
The gallery now looks after several of her paintings, the newest of which hangs on the gallery's second floor.
"She would have been very pleased," said Odjig's son Stan Somerville of the AGO's memorial event, which included speeches, singing and a hoop dancing performance by the artist's niece, Lisa Odjig.
"She had a lot of pride in what her accomplishments were but she never had an ego, so she would have been very humbled, as well, for the people that are showing up," Somerville added.
A champion for young artists
Odjig earned the Order of Canada and a Governor General's Award during her trailblazing career, but she's remembered equally for her work shepherding the generations of Indigenous artists that followed her.
She was a co-founder of the Professional Native Indian Artists Association and brokered sales for upcoming artists, for which Somerville says she took no commission.
"All Indigenous artists — past, present and future — owe Daphne a debt of gratitude for helping us move our art from craft tables at flea markets into some of the finest art galleries and collections in Canada," her Indian Group of Seven co-founder Alex Janvier told CBC News in October.
As Odjig once said: "If there's any aboriginal child around I hope it motivates them that they, too, can accomplish what they want to be if they work hard at it."