Inuit art is a great exception in the world of 20th-century native and tribal arts. Most of these—such as Native American, Australian Aboriginal, or African—are either a revival or a degradation of traditional ceremonial forms, but modern Canadian Inuit (Eskimo) art was born in response to prompting by outsiders. Originally intended for the souvenir market, it flowered unexpectedly into a serious artistic phenomenon after World War II. Inuit carvers, weavers, and printmakers have created an astonishing amount of moving and compelling work that exhibits unmistakable personal and cultural integrity.

The origins of this art actually date back 200 years to the first arrival of Europeans in Canada. Since then, Canadian Inuit have been creating innovative and hybridized works of art influenced by and catering to the tastes of the larger culture. Among Inuit peoples in the rest of the Arctic—Siberia, northern Alaska, and Greenland—art-making also has been adaptive, though in somewhat different ways. These cultures have stronger established art traditions and less spectacular Modernist expressions.

Today the Inuit in Canada number about 50,000, scattered over approximately 50 villages and towns along the country’s Arctic coasts. Although Inuit live in wooden houses with modern conveniences, they still think of themselves as hunters, and Inuit identity is closely tied to the land and its animals on both a practical and a spiritual level. In some villages, one-third of the adult population makes art, either full time or part time; art is a valuable export commodity in remote communities where few jobs exist.

However, Inuit art fulfills important functions beyond the practical; it explains Native culture, beliefs, and values to the outside world, and in doing so it preserves Inuit culture and instills pride in its makers. Much of the work celebrates the past; the artists and their southern audience share a sense of nostalgia for Inuit traditions, but it is important to remember that Inuit culture is not frozen in time. Increasingly, Inuit artists comment upon life today, with all of its problems and ambiguities.

Canada’s Inuit are descended from a thousand-year-old whaling culture known as Thule. Around the year 1600, the Thule culture was disrupted by a period of cooling known as the Little Ice Age that lasted until the mid-19th century and coincided with the growing presence of European visitors. Climate change destroyed the prosperous village-based lifestyle and required rapid adaptation to the culture that we now think of as classic Eskimo. During this period Canada’s Inuit lived a precarious semi-nomadic existence and depended on animals for food and virtually every aspect of their material culture. They produced little that could be classified as art, other than simple dolls and toys, amulets, and the occasional decorated tool.

The Inuit are a resourceful people who, having adapted themselves to the vagaries of climate and animal migrations, also adjusted themselves to the presence of foreigners—explorers, missionaries, fur traders, whalers, and others—who came with increasing frequency in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The outsiders brought the rifles, tools, and so-called “southern” foods that Inuit quickly became dependent upon, and often bartered them for souvenirs. In this way, a small-scale, sporadic trade in traditional tools, toys, and amulets, as well as newly-invented models and carvings mostly made from ivory, developed slowly through the first half of the 20th century.

Since 1949—the acknowledged beginning of the Modernist period—Inuit art has developed as a loosely organized series of experiments in a variety of media. The wider public only discovered it through a series of well-publicized shows in 1949–52, including an exhibition at Canada’s National Gallery in Ottawa. In 1953 the non-profit Eskimo Art Inc. of Michigan began marketing Inuit art in the United States.