Untitled (Floating Images)

Description

Untitled (Floating Images) by Daphne Odjig 1980 – First Nations Woodland Art presented by DaVic Gallery of Native Canadian Arts.

Due to the significant historical value and specialized white-glove shipping requirements for this original Odjig work, we process all acquisitions via personalized consultation to ensure the highest standard of delivery and care.

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Condition:       No condition to report.

Provenance:   Hampton Gallery, Kamloops, BC.  Private Collection, British Columbia

Description by Artist:     No description by the artist found.

Notes from DaVic Gallery:  Untitled (Floating Images), dated 1980, captures Daphne Odjig at a pivotal moment of ‘Level’ artistic sovereignty. While she famously remarked that her art was her ‘primary statement’ because she found it difficult to intellectualize her work through words, this painting speaks with a sophisticated, silent authority.

By 1980, Odjig had moved beyond the Cubist influences of her earlier years to create a purely Indigenous Modernism. In this large-scale masterwork, she ‘sculpts’ a fluid, dreamlike space using the rhythmic lines she inherited from her grandfather, a traditional stone carver. These lines do not merely divide space; they connect the human form to the land in an unbroken ancestral loop.

The palette of ochres and muted teals creates a ‘lithic’ depth, suggesting figures emerging from the very earth of the Wikwemikong. By stripping away a formal title, Odjig makes a bold political statement: she invites the viewer to abandon the Western need for narrative and instead enter a direct, emotional encounter with the Anishinaabe spirit. This is a museum-grade acquisition that represents the ‘Clean Break’ between traditional Woodland art and the height of lyrical Canadian Modernism.

While this 1980 masterwork was originally left ‘Untitled’ by the artist, I have assigned the subtitle ‘Floating Images’ to better reflect the ethereal, weightless quality of this specific period in Odjig’s career. Unlike the grounded, structural forms of her later ‘Woodland’ narratives, the figures here seem to drift in a suspended state of being, unburdened by gravity or rigid borders. This subtitle is a tribute to the ‘rhythmic line’ she inherited from her stone-carver grandfather—a line that here does not ‘bind’ the subjects to the earth, but allows them to float within the spiritual architecture of the Anishinaabe dreamscape. By providing this visual anchor, I invite you to see the painting as I do: a fluid, ‘Integrated’ window into the very heartbeat of Indigenous Modernism.

To experience the profound presence of this masterwork within a modern architectural context, please refer to the final gallery image showing ‘Untitled (Floating Images)’ in situ. It demonstrates how Odjig’s sophisticated palette and ‘Floating’ forms create a grounding, spiritual anchor in a contemporary home.