Canada Goose Feeding and a Hawk
Provenance:
The Jerry Litman Collection, Kenora;
By descent to present Private Collection, Winnipeg
As a resident of Kenora and later Winnipeg, Dr. Jerry Litman (1928 - 2020) brought a genuine excitement to collecting works of Indigenous art that reflected the communities in which he worked. Dr. Litman practiced as a dentist in remote areas of Ontario and Manitoba where there was limited access to dental services, and worked with Indigenous communities in these areas.
It was through this work that Litman encountered many remarkable artists, including Josh Kakegamic and Norval Morrisseau. With an eye for quality and a love for this flourishing art movement, Dr. Litman collected over 250 paintings by First Nations and Inuit artists.
Much of the Litman collection has been dispersed among museums and university collections close to the family's heart, notably the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and "The Muse" - Douglas Family Art Centre in Kenora.
Eddy Cobiness
1933 - 1996
Ojibwa artist Eddy Cobiness was a founding member of the Indian Group of Seven, an association of native artists of the Woodland School. Cobiness was born in 1933 and raised in Warroad, Minnesota. After a stint in the US Army where he was a Golden Gloves boxer, he moved to Canada and lived on the Buffalo Point Reserve on the shores of Lake of the Woods.
Like many of the Woodland School artists he was self taught. He began by illustrating scenes from his community and then evolved to more abstract forms. Influenced by the work of Benjamin Chee Chee, by the 1960’s he was recognized for stylized images of animals. In an interview that was given to Windspeaker reporter David Hickey in 1992, he claimed to be much influenced by Picasso’s sparse use of line and colour.
Cobiness worked in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pen and ink and coloured pencil, signing his treaty number ’47’ to his later works. Eddy died in 1996.
