Alex Simeon Janvier was born in 1935 on the Denesuliné reserve of Le Goff, now Cold Lake First Nations, Alberta. He and his nine siblings learned the Dene language and were raised with traditional fishing, hunting and trapping techniques. As a young child at the Blue Quills Indian Residential School in St. Paul, art became a vital means of expression and escape for Janvier. His curiosity and skill led him to study at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. His teachers introduced him to avant-garde movements including Bauhaus, Cubism and Surrealism, and here he developed his signature visual language that would later garner international acclaim.

The origin of the distinctive lines that compose 99 Goes Hollywood can be traced to drawings Janvier made as far back as 1960, with clear influence from the likes of Paul Klee and Joan Miró. His spindly forms often radiate from the centre, meandering in a chaotic order as they whip outwards and dissipate into the negative space of the picture plane. These energetic patterns have invited comparisons to calligraphy, rivers and tributaries, networks of nerves and veins, or the folding licks of flames. In this canvas, one might recognize in the cool grey background a hockey rink viewed from above, with the wild prismatic striations of pastel tones tracing the arabesque patterns of skaters as they dart and weave between one another across the ice.

The title refers to the profound loss of Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, number 99, as he was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, the same year this painting was produced. It is a testament to Janvier’s open, biomorphic style rooted in the physics and spirit of nature that we may also see within it the choreography of sport and its capacity for beauty. In 2016, Janvier was commissioned to design a circular floor mosaic titled Tsa tsa ke k’e (Iron Foot Place), 14 metres in diameter, for the lobby of Edmonton’s new Rogers Place arena. At the opening ceremonies, Gretzky handed Janvier a hockey stick, commemorating the historic bond and solidifying Janvier’s place in the hearts of Edmontonian hockey fans and art lovers alike.

99 Goes Hollywood epitomizes Janvier’s forward-thinking attitude as he integrates Canadian hockey lore with his singular visual language grounded in a Dene world view—what the artist, quoted by Bob Weber, described as “Our Creator’s voice in colour.” Through his contemporary channeling of this voice, Janvier synthesized the ancient with the imminent, the popular with the sacred, and the personal with the cosmic. Since his passing in 2024, there has been an outpouring of respect paid to his artistic legacy, defined by his resilience and visionary innovation. Like Gretzky, Alex Janvier will be remembered for the countless barriers he broke and his undeniable status as a legend.

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