Norval Morrisseau was an Anishinaabe artist from northwestern Ontario and the founder of the Woodland School of art. Known by his spirit name, Copper Thunderbird, he is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.
He was raised by his maternal grandparents near Lake Nipigon, following the Anishinaabe practice of grandparents helping raise children and pass on cultural knowledge. His grandfather was a Midewiwin spiritual leader who taught him Anishinaabe stories, ceremonies and beliefs at a time when the Canadian government was actively suppressing Indigenous cultural practices. Those teachings became a central inspiration for his art.
Morrisseau began painting in the late 1950s, drawing from Anishinaabe pictographs, birchbark scrolls and spiritual teachings while developing a visual language entirely his own. Heavy black contours define human, animal and plant forms, while interior lines, divided circles and connecting bands reveal the energy and relationships moving through them.
His first major commercial exhibition in Toronto in 1962 challenged the prevailing idea that Indigenous art belonged in museums as artifact or craft rather than in galleries as contemporary fine art. His success opened space for a generation of Indigenous artists and helped establish the movement now known as Woodland art.
Morrisseau later became a founding member of the Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation, commonly called the Indian Group of Seven. Formed in 1973, the group brought together leading Indigenous artists who wanted greater control over how their work was shown, understood and valued in the Canadian art world.
Throughout his career, Morrisseau painted traditional stories, spiritual transformation, relationships among living beings and the tensions created by colonialism and Christianity. In 2006, the National Gallery of Canada mounted a major retrospective of his work, the first exhibition of its kind at the Gallery devoted to a contemporary First Nations artist. He died in 2007, leaving a visual language that continues to shape Indigenous art across Canada.
