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Wolf

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Specifications

Artists	Tony Hunt (Artist)
Date	1972 or earlier
Signature	Tony Hunt
Inscriptions	Wolf
Materials	ink
Support	paper, unidentified
Fabrication Techniques	screen print
Dimensions (cm)	47.0 (Width) • 41.0 (Height)
Functions	Art
Barcode	604546

Wolf

Tony Hunt, Sr. was an artist and hereditary chief of the Kwakwaka'wakw people of the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada, a tremendous ambassador for Northwest coast culture, and a champion of the struggle for Indigenous art to be respected and regarded as noteworthy. His own production was vast, with paintings, prints and hundreds of totem poles that have been installed around the world.

Wolf is a silkscreen print in green, red and black, circa 1972. It shows not a wolf directly, but a traditional wolf mask of the Kwakwaka'wakw, with its all-seeing eyes and powerful teeth.

Tony Hunt

Tony Hunt Sr. was born in the Kwakwaka’wakw community of Alert Bay, British Columbia, in 1942. He was hereditary chief of the KwaGulth people at Fort Rupert and belonged to a family of renowned artists and professional woodcarvers, including his maternal grandfather, Mungo Martin; his father, Henry; his two younger brothers, George and Stanley; and his son, Tony Jr.

Hunt served as assistant carver to his father from 1962 to 1972. Together they restored many deteriorating totem poles through the Royal British Columbia Museum’s Indigenous art restoration program. Hunt created one hundred original, full-scale totem poles, each carved out of a single cedar log. He designed the massive KwaGulth ceremonial Big House at Fort Rupert, and created countless paintings, prints and cedar board carvings in the traditional KwaGulth style. Raven Transforming into Man, a four-tonne stone sculpture commissioned for the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), is one of his major works. Hunt died in Campbell River in 2017.