‘How he wanted to show the world’: Artist’s 1970s work resurfaces in Winnipeg

CTV's Daniel Halmarson has the story of Don Laforte, an Indigenous artist who died in 2000, and the renewed interest in his work.

For every household name in the art world, there are thousands of skilled artists that go relatively undiscovered for years.

But the paintings and sketches still hold tremendous value to the people who knew the artist best.

That’s the case for Winnipeg’s Dave Rundle, who owns just a few of his late brother Don LaForte’s sketches from the 1970s.

“He liked to do pen and ink,” Rundle told CTV News. “He did a little bit of oils, but not a lot.”

Rundle said LaForte was born near Powerview-Pine Falls in 1941, was sent to Fort Alexander Residential School in his youth, and eventually ended up in Winnipeg.

“He went to school at Gordon Bell High School and he played football there,” Rundle said. “One time, he got his name in the papers, and that made him a hero to us.”

Rundle said, aside from being athletic, LaForte had a real knack for drawing. He recalled a neighbour once asked LaForte to sketch a picture of Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams.

“You know, [Williams] at-bat… He did it and they loved it,” Rundle said. “Where it went, I couldn’t tell you.”

He also recalls the Royal Bank of Canada commissioning a piece from LaForte in the early 70s.

“I’ve been looking for that picture ever since then,” Rundle said. “It’s a young child’s face peeking out from behind a hand. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Some of LaForte’s highly detailed sketches can be found online, and there is a reference about the artist on the National Gallery of Canada’s website, but there’s little information about him and his work readily available.

That’s likely why it took John Muliyil’s family years to track down LaForte’s relatives.

Muliyil met LaForte while working in downtown Winnipeg in the 1970s at the Centennial Concert Hall and the Winnipeg Inn.

He said LaForte’s portrait work captured the challenges Indigenous people were facing at the time.

“He portrayed that through his work,” Muliyil told CTV News. “I think that’s what he wanted to show the world.”

In 1975, LaForte gave Muliyil a portrait of a woman with a tangle of thick black hair and a grim look on her face. Muliyil said he never saw LaForte after that day.

“He had this rolled-up paper in his hand. It looked more like a newspaper, so I didn’t know what it was,” Muliyil recalled.

Later that night, Muliyil showed his wife what the artist had gifted him.

“We unroll this thing, and my wife said, ‘Oh my god, this is beautiful!’”

The sketch remained in the Muliyil family for the next five decades until his daughter tracked down LaForte’s family through social media and returned the drawing to them.

Dave Rundle said LaForte died in 2000 at the age of 58 and added this small burst of interest in his brother’s work is a nice reminder of the man and the artist.

“I will always remember him,” Rundle said. “He will never fade.”