Our current October online auctions offer a wide range of artworks by renowned Canadian artists, representing the country from coast to coast. The Abstractions Auction offers many commanding and stunning artworks to tempt the eye, while appealing to all levels of collectors. The artistic post-war movements that propelled Canadian art forward after the Group of Seven were innovative and exciting, demonstrating the influence of world views and a new social dialogue.
Claude Tousignant, #5-79-102
Claude Tousignant, #3-75
Claude Tousignant, C-1-78
Claude Tousignant, Oscillations 1956
Four captivating works by Claude Tousignant are exemplary of the artist’s minimalist, expressionist and abstractionist style. The vibrant colours, rich tones and large compositional format of these artworks make them an incredible addition to any discerning collection.
Harold Town, “Abstraction” (1957)
Harold Town, a founder and member of Pahinters Eleven, as well as an accomplished artist, is represented by a variety of works on paper and a delicate sculptural object. Works by this abstract artist from Toronto are highly sought after, instantly adding energy and vibrance to a varied collection of art.
Harold Town, Untitled (Egg)
Harold Town painstakingly created a small number of these “eggs” and gave them as Christmas gifts. The artwork is a symmetrical collage, careful applied upon a plastic egg from which a pair of women’s pantyhose were packaged (as was the packaging used by “L’eggs” from the late 1960s until the early 1990s).
Rita Letendre, Danna
Two significant lots in the auction by Rita Letendre, a leading member of the colourist movement, exemplify her fascination with depicting speed and vibration. Momentum (Lot 2) and Danna (Lot 42) are both a testament to her artistic practice.
Sorel Etrog, Etrusco (Study)
Multiple distinctive sculptures are featured in this auction, providing an attractive and dynamic option for a collector. Etrusco (Study) by Sorel Etrog (lot 10) is a diminutive work by the artist, measuring 4.75 x 1.5 x 1.875 inches (overall). Further sculptural works by Anthony Quinn (lot 11), Antonio Kieff Grediaga (lot 47), Roger Cavalli (lot 48, 49, 50) and Ruben Zellermayer (lot 52 and 53) are lots to pay attention to in the final day of bidding, as they are both accessible in terms of value and add three dimensionality to a gathering of artworks at home or in the office.
Léon Bellefleur, Les écluses
Key post-war highlights in the auction include Les écluses by Léon Bellefleur (lot 1), Carmina Burana No.1 by William Ronald (lot 3), Fentesby Yves Gaucher (lot 44) and Bi-Ocre by Guido Molinari (lot 45).
Yves Gaucher, Fentes
The complete catalogue of artworks included in the Abstractions Online Auction can be foundby following this link. For more information on our three current online auctions, how to book your private preview appointment at the gallery, or our consignment process, please contact us at info@cowleyabbott.ca and one of our specialists would be delighted to assist you.
Cowley Abbott is pleased to launch into the new year with our January Online Auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art. Comprised of fantastic works by blue-chip Post-War Canadian artists, practicing Contemporary artists, and hidden gems, this sale offers the opportunity for new and seasoned collectors alike to build their collections.
We’ve highlighted a few of the great artists and artworks included in this thematic sale and their significance to the canon of Canadian art history. This dynamic auction offers buyers the opportunity to inject colour, vibrancy, and modern aesthetics into their collections, while allowing a complex dialogue between works over a range of styles, themes and movements.
Ecology and The Canadian Landscape
Steve Driscoll, Lagoon
Two works of particular note in our auction are Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s ink drawing “Untitled” and Steve Driscoll’s mixed media “Lagoon”. Integral to both artist’s practice is the effect of human contact on the landscape.
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Untitled
Cowichan/Syilx First Nations contemporary artist, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is one of the most sought-after artists in contemporary Canadian art. Yuxweluptun’s strategy is to document and promote change in contemporary Indigenous history, infusing his art with Coast Salish cosmology, Northwest Coast formal design elements, and the Western landscape tradition. His work incorporates components from Northwest First Nations art, as well as evocations of the Canadian landscape painting tradition derived from the Group of Seven. The figures included in his works are not necessarily representations of real people, but instead act as a visual comment on Indigenous identity within the Canadian physical and social landscape. This diminutive work, though small in scale, exemplifies complex and weighty theories of colonization, Indigenous identity, social politics and questions Canadian national identity.
Steve Driscoll, a Toronto-based artist, is known for his mesmerizing urethan-based paintings of bold neon colours morphing and marrying into each other, creating expressive representations of the Canadian landscape. Toronto-based curator Bill Clarke explains that Driscoll’s works are “More than just re-imaginings of the landscape, his paintings, materially and conceptually, also illustrate how advancements in technology are shaping our interactions with the world and supporting innovative approaches to art-making.” “Lagoon” offers a psychedelic close-up view of the shimmering surface of a lagoon, with the abstracted currents and fauna hypnotizing the viewer. We are pleased to be entrusted with this commanding work by an important contemporary artist.
Blue Chip Post-War Art
Yves Gaucher, Silences
This auction introduces wonderful examples of works by celebrated Canadian Post-War artists. Aligned with the movements of Minimalism, hard-edge abstraction, conceptual art and bold expressionism, artworks by Yves Gaucher, Gershon Iskowitz, and Roy Kiyooka present an opportunity for collectors to diversify their collections with blue-chip artists who helped shape contemporary art practices.
Gershon Iskowitz, Untitled Abstraction
Yves Gaucher’s “Silences” exemplifies the artist’s minimalist approach as a rebellion to conventions of printmaking. Calm tonalities, geometric form and expanse of space provide an arena for introspection. Whereas “Untitled” by Gerson Iskowitz offers a bold expressive space, highlighting the artist’s signature exploration of colour relationships. An artist with a distinct style of his own, not fully aligning with abstraction or representation exclusively, Iskowitz produced these fresh watercolour works throughout his career as an exploration of the limits of the medium and colour relationships. The resulting organic forms bleed into one another and float ethereally across the paper.
Roy Kiyooka, Abstraction
The experimental Roy Kiyooka is represented in the auction by two distinct works. The artist’s early 1959 experimental watercolour “Abstraction”, which oscillates between abstraction and representation, is in contrast to a more contemporary 1971 conceptual gelatin silver print “StoneDGloves”. The former exemplifies the young artist’s explorations with watercolour and abstraction under the influence and tutelage of Jock MacDonald at the provincial Institute of Technology and Art. “StoneDGloves” presents a dramatic shift towards conceptual art in photography. This work was a part of a photographic series taken by the artist at the construction sites of Osaka, Japan at the time of Expo ’70. Kiyooka photographed various discarded workmen’s gloves which had been petrified in cement on worksites. The series recalls art theories of trace and ephemerality while exploring the poetic relationship of human interaction with the evolution of the landscape. The Collection of the National Gallery of Canada holds 18 photographs from this series, including this image.
Pop Colour and Aesthetics
If you are looking to add a bold splash of colour to your collection or acquire playful op-art, works by Max Johnston, John MacGregor, and Burton Kramer would be perfect additions.
Max Johnston, Wholeness in a Collective Compression
Max Johnston’s “Wholeness in a Collective Compression” is an excellent example of the artist’s experimentation with the limits of paint as a medium. Moving towards sculptural application of the paint, this piece showcases Johnston’s physical language of paint on the two-dimensional plane. A vibrant technicolour display, this piece instantly inspires energy while adhering to the modernist grid.
John MacGregor, Ripple Time (Multi-Colour)
Throughout his practice, John MacGregor has investigated the effects of time on ordinary objects. Chairs, clocks, rooms, and objects are distorted on the image plane as a characterization of bending space and time. The artist explains:
“I have always been fascinated by the concept of time. What it might be, how it is perceived, how it is represented and what it symbolizes. We live in a society that is structured and regulated by a symbol of time. We have come to accept this symbol as a valid and real expression of what time is. However, this acceptance has been at the expense of our intuitive and subjective feelings about time. Clocks have forced us to view time as detached, regimented and a structured entity that has a reality separate from ourselves. The equal intervals and numbers on the face of the clock further this perception.”
Both “Ripple Time (Multi-colour)” and “Squeezed Time” employ surrealist and op-art aesthetics of morphed and distorted objects in a play of the visual plane of depth and dimension. This manipulation of form represents the artist’s investigation of metric time as a modern social construct and the power it wields over our core functions. Playful and contemplative, the works immediately energize the viewing space and engage the viewer with their own temporal experiences.
Burton Kramer, Garden Music
Finally, Burton Kramer’s fresh geometric canvas entitled “Garden Music” brings forth memories of effervescent symphonies. The artist is famously known as the graphic designer for the iconic 1974 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation logo with the radiating, stylized ‘C’. Through his fine art practice, Kramer is renowned for his experiments with synesthesia of colour and music, exploring the language of visual forms and sound as the eye dances along the exuberant canvas of fresh pigments.
Cowley Abbott is delighted to be entrusted with a variety of rare and stunning works in the current Post-War and Contemporary Art Auction. The full catalogue of artworks included in our January online auction can be found here, presenting a plethora of paintings, sculpture, works on paper and innovative mixed media pieces by renowned artists. Contact our team for further details on this sale, the bidding process and how we can assist you to build your collection with Cowley Abbott.
Auction Showcases Important Non-Figurative Works in Canadian Art History
Consignor’s Fall Live Auction of Canadian Art presents an impressive selection of abstract painting from artists across the country and through the decades. Early ventures into abstraction in Canada occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, although they were sporadic and inconsistent. These artists, notably Kathleen Munn, Bertram Brooker, Lawren Harris and Jock MacDonald, were heavily influenced by European artistic movements, namely Cubism, Surrealism and Symbolism. An examination of the abstract works in Consignor’s November sale can help illustrate the story of how abstraction emerged and developed throughout Canada in the following decades.
In the 1940s, Montreal gave rise to the highly-influential Automatistes, Canada’s first avant-garde art movement. Under the leadership of Paul-Émile Borduas, a group of young artists rebelled against their artistically conservative and politically and religiously repressive province. They strove for creative spontaneity, free from academic rules.
After reading André Breton’s “Le Surréalisme et la peinture” in 1945, Jean-Paul Riopelle was inspired to break away from tradition to pursue non-representational painting. The young artist created several small watercolours in the next two years, consisting of web-like black lines, inspired by Surrealism and Breton’s automatic writing techniques, such as Sans titre of 1946, lot 6 in Consignor’s November sale.
Another member of the Automatistes, Marcelle Ferron was encouraged by Borduas to abandon landscape painting in favour of a more radical abstraction. From 1946 to 1953, Ferron preferred a ‘sgraffito’ technique, applying multiple layers of pigment and scraping away between applications with a palette knife. This signature approach of Ferron is exemplified in the colourful layers of paint in Sans titre (1949), lot 101 in the Live Auction.
In the following decade abstraction spread across Canada. Toronto exploded as an art centre in the 1950s, largely influenced by the Abstract Expressionists in New York. Harold Town was a founder and member of the Painters Eleven, a group of Toronto abstract artists that exhibited together during the 1950s. Rich colour and thick paint application, as exemplified in Clandeboy Reprise(1959), lot 71, are characteristic of Town’s approach to abstraction, inspired by the New York School.
Contemporary artist Michael Snow exhibited in Toronto in the mid-to-late 1950s at the Greenwich Gallery. Though today he is known as a pioneer of conceptualist and multimedia art throughout the world, Snow’s work of these years were also heavily influenced by American abstract artists such as De Kooning, Kline, and Rothko. Off Minor(1958), lot 25 in Consignor’s November auction, exemplifies Snow’s affiliation with avant-garde abstract movements at the time, shortly prior to creating his famous Walking Woman Works.
A notable and influential group of Canadian abstract artists formed in Regina in the 1960s, known as the Regina Five. Founding member Ron Bloore was instrumental in starting the Emma Lake workshops as a way for practising artists to break from the artistic isolation they felt in the prairies. As a professor of art history and archaeology, the influence of archeological excavation and ancient civilizations worked their way into Bloore’s painting.The monochromatic palette of Untitled, lot 86, references the white marble buildings and sculptures of ancient Greece and the Classical period.
During the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops held in 1962-63, Saskatchewan artist William Perehudoff was introduced to Post-Painterly Abstraction by art critic Clement Greenberg and American artist Kenneth Noland. Many of the artist’s wide horizontal canvases of the mid-to-late 1970s are composed of vibrant parallel bands of colour, such as AC-78-20, lot 11 in the live auction. The effect of the flat plains and open skies that are so dramatically present throughout Saskatchewan is often detectable in Perehudoff’s work – AC-78-20 may be evocative of a prairie sunset.
Jack Shadbolt was an innovative and dominant figure in the Vancouver art scene beginning in the 1940s. Shadbolt drew from many sources of inspiration, including Cubism, Surrealism, American Regionalism and Northwest Coast art. The artist met Emily Carr in 1930 while attending Victoria College. Carr left a strong impression on Shadbolt’s life and work; they were both inspired by the spiritual unity with nature that is apparent in Northwest Coast art. Sea Edge 5 (1978), lot 9, is exemplary of Jack Shadbolt’s bold and colourful work of the late seventies. Sea Edge 5 serves as part of a series on the theme of abstracted seascapes, and Contexts: Variations on Primavera Theme, lot 10, is one of 15 hand-painted posters of the ‘primavera’ theme, which together form a mosaic-like mural.
Abstract painting in Canada has continued to evolve through a multitude of approaches in the 1970s, 80s and through to today. Lot 8,Rituel, by Léon Bellefleur, Lot 31, Spring Yellows – B by Gershon Iskowitz, and Lot 103, Les feuilles d’un astre by Jean-Paul Jérôme, among many other non-figurative artworks in Consignor’s Fall Live Auction, demonstrate the enduring development of unique abstract styles throughout the country, from the ‘gestural’ to the ‘hard-edge’. Visit our gallery and view the full catalogue on the Consignor website for more artworks and details regarding the Fall Live Auction of Important Canadian Art on November 23rd at the Gardiner Museum.
