Tin Flute is a monumental, vertically oriented painting by the Denesuline artist Alex Janvier in the artist’s signature biomorphic style that bursts with colour and experimentation. Janvier grew up in Le Goff, the reserve of Cold Lake First Nations, Alberta, and attended Blue Quills residential school beginning at age eight. The school strictly imposed Catholic values onto the Indigenous students and introduced many hardships that Janvier would address in his later work. It was at Blue Quills that Janvier demonstrated an obvious artistic talent, creating murals and altarpieces with both Catholic and Indigenous iconography under the tutelage of his first mentor, Carl Altenberg, a German artist and Bauhaus devotee.

Janvier’s distinctive design structure crystallized in the early 1960s after he attended the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary, where his teachers introduced him to the likes of Joan Miró (1893 – 1983) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866 –1944). Janvier synthesized the imports of American and European expressionism, Surrealism and abstraction with his own Denesuline world view centred around a profound interconnection with the land, resulting in the swirling micro- and macrocosmic motifs found across his oeuvre. His calligraphic lines meander organically, evoking natural elements ranging from the tiniest nerve cells to the cosmic grandeur of solar flares.

In 1985, Janvier represented Canada in a Canadian-Chinese cultural exchange, and he was inspired by the landscape and gardens of the region. Tin Flute belongs to a small series of works created during these pivotal years of 1985 and 1986, each featuring the same grand dimensions, exuberant floral themes, and a heightened sense of colour as inspired by his travels. These paintings are notable for their unique layered approach, where loose translucent washes are added as they gain sharpness and opacity towards the surface. The vivid coral, pale robin’s egg blue and lemon yellow behind the central image create an atmospheric perspective, adding depth beyond Janvier’s typical two-dimensional graphic surface. Even the harder edges here are looser than in Janvier’s works up until this point and foretell even more experimentation with watercolour later in his career.

The paint has a wet shine and is manipulated with a free hand. The central form evokes a bean, seed or embryo without landing on a single subject, and emanates even more associative growth like whipping and winding leaves, vines, petals, stamen and roots. One might also see the patterns and colours of feathers from a bird-of-paradise, one perhaps seen by Janvier on his travels or born from his imagination.

It is possible Janvier borrowed the work’s title from the popular French-Canadian novel of the same name by Gabrielle Roy, originally published as Bonheur d’occasion (“Second-hand Happiness”) in 1945. The story of love in the face of Depression and World War II–era poverty had a significant cultural impact and was made into a film in 1983, a few years before this painting was produced. Janvier often left us to wonder what, if any, connections his titles had to his paintings. We can be certain that the story of The Tin Flute is not so dissimilar to Janvier’s own: one of resilience, persistence and wild dreams in the face of social upheaval and adversity. The painting Tin Flute is a testament to the strength of Janvier’s unwavering spirit and his ability to transform his life experiences into optimistic visions for the future. Tin Flute was a significant painting to Janvier, and he held it in his private collection for decades until its sale to Dr. Luigi Rossi.

For the biography on Dr. Luigi Rossi in PDF format, please click here.