The pioneer Inuit art scholar George Swinton was an early admirer and champion of Pangnark’s style. “He was doubtlessly the Brancusi of the North, with a rare feeling for abstraction and for the sheer beauty of curved and hard-edged shapes” [1]. Although Pangnark’s earliest works from the mid-late 1960s were recognizable as human figures, they were already characterized by geometricizing and even minimalist tendencies [2]. By his “middle period” c. 1970-72, most of Pangnark’s figures were radically simplified but still discernible as human; by 1973-74 his sculptures were barely recognizable as human, with only the faintest of facial details scratched onto largely abstract forms that tend to follow the original shape of the stone.

This quite remarkable Hooded Figure dates from early in the artist’s middle period. Relatively large for a work of this early date, the sculpture still reveals Pangnark’s early interest in hard-edged geometric form, while clearly venturing into minimalist territory because of its lack of figural detail. Its subject matter is ambiguous: does it portray a human figure, or simply a human head? The simply scratched eyes and mouth (which almost seem to reveal a whisper of a coy smile) aren’t telling.

1. Swinton in Eskimo Point/Arviat, 1982, p. 14.

2. The 1970 National Museum of Man traveling exhibition catalogue Oonark - Pangnark showcased a number of small semi-abstract works by the artist.