Alex Simeon Janvier

Alex Simeon Janvier, CM, RCA (1935–2024), was a Dene Suline and Saulteaux painter born on February 28, 1935, on the Le Goff Reserve of Cold Lake First Nations in northern Alberta. At age eight, he was placed in the Blue Quills Indian Residential School near St. Paul, Alberta, where he lived until his late teens. Encouraged by school staff who observed his aptitude for draughtsmanship, he went on to pursue formal fine art training at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary (now the Alberta University of the Arts), graduating with honours in 1960. Following graduation, he taught briefly at the institution before working as an art instructor and cultural consultant for both municipal and federal cultural agencies.

During the late 1960s, Janvier was commissioned by the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to work on the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal, an event that marked an early milestone in his public career. In 1973, he joined Daphne Odjig, Norval Morrisseau, Jackson Beardy, Carl Ray, Joseph Sanchez, and Eddy Cobiness to co-found the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (PNIAI) in Winnipeg. The group, known informally as the Indian Group of Seven, organized to advocate for professional recognition, direct representation, and inclusion for Indigenous artists within Canadian public galleries and institutions.

Throughout his career, Janvier received numerous large-scale public and architectural mural commissions across Canada. Among his most prominent public works is "Morning Star" (Gambeh Then'), a 418-square-metre ceiling mural painted in 1993 on the dome of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History) in Gatineau, Quebec. In 2015, he completed "Tsa Tsa Ke K'e" (Iron Foot Place), a monumental circular tile mosaic measuring fourteen metres in diameter, installed in Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta.

Janvier represented Canada internationally in numerous official cultural delegations, including a Canadian-Chinese cultural exchange in 1985 and the Canadian Forum on Cultural Enterprise in Paris, France, in 2004. In 2016, the National Gallery of Canada organized a comprehensive retrospective survey of his work that traveled to major public museums, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

In recognition of his contributions to Canadian visual arts, Janvier was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2007. He was invested into the Alberta Order of Excellence in 2010 and received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2008. His paintings are preserved in the permanent collections of public institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Janvier died on July 10, 2024, at the age of eighty-nine.