Born near Gjoa Haven in 1897, John Kavik lived for decades in the inland region between Baker Lake and Cambridge Bay before starvation forced his relocation in the late 1950s, first to Baker Lake then to Rankin Inlet in 1958. He found himself unfit to work at the local nickel mine, but instead of retiring he began carving in 1960; amazingly, Kavik continued making art until he was about ninety.

Kavik’s grit and determination are amply evident in his sculptures, which with few exceptions are notable for their starkness and raw energy. The term “crude” is often used to describe Kavik’s style – but stylistically, crudeness in a Kavik sculpture can encompass anything from the brutally elemental to the almost abstract, while emotionally and psychologically his works can express anything from terrifying bleakness to astonishing poignancy and even humour. Their common denominators are strength and honesty and vitality.

Father and Son Wearing Snow Goggles is an extraordinary work, even for Kavik. Importantly, it was carved at the very beginning of his long career, when Kavik was already an older man but still a “young” artist. The artist carved several back-to-back figures over the years; the best-known example, Double Figure from 1965, has been published in Norman Zepp’s Pure Vision (cat. 56); Swinton 1972/92 (fig. 646); and Sculpture/Inuit (cat. 386). Among his handful of figures or faces with snow goggles, the most famous example, Man Wearing Goggles from c. 1960 – a powerful masterpiece contemporaneous with this work – is published in Pure Vision (cat. 53) and elsewhere. Works by Kavik with inset or added antler are, however, exceedingly rare; we know of only one example, also contemporaneous with the present work (sold at Waddington’s in 1982). Unusually, Father and Son Wearing Snow Goggles combines all three elements, but what makes the sculpture truly exceptional is its monumentality, the rawness of its manufacture, and the expressionistic, starkly bleak portrayal of the two figures. The image is more than unsettling, it is positively gut-wrenching. We are simply gobsmacked by the power of this work, one of Kavik’s greatest masterpieces.