In The Caller, Alex Janvier distills movement, sound, and presence into a web of fluid line and restrained yet charged color. Spidery, meandering strokes pulse across the surface, where deep magentas and sky blues quietly clash with bursts of orange and grounding greens. The composition hovers between abstraction and representation: two central forms suggest animate bodies, their whiplashing extensions recalling bulrushes or buffalo tails, while serrated motifs echo ancestral adornments from Denesuline material culture. Scattered triangles, chevrons, lozenges, and geometric forms reference the visual languages shared across many Plains Nations, translated here into a contemporary, rhythmic syntax.

Created in 1972, The Caller marks a pivotal moment in Janvier’s career and in the history of contemporary Indigenous art. That same year, Janvier – alongside Jackson Beardy and Daphne Odjig – participated in the landmark exhibition Treaty Numbers: 23, 287, 1171: Three Indian Painters of the Prairies at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the first exhibition devoted exclusively to contemporary First Nations artists in a Canadian public institution. In this work, Janvier asserts a visual language that is both modern and deeply rooted – one that calls across time, culture, and place, insisting on Indigenous presence within the evolving discourse of abstraction.