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Artworks
KENOJUAK ASHEVAK, C.C., R.C.A. (1927-2013) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
Song of Spring (Diptych), Spring 2006 #1Printmaker: PITSEOLAK NIVIAQSI, R.C.A. (1947-2015) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
lithograph diptych, overall: 33.25 x 46 in (84.5 x 116.8 cm), each sheet: 33.25 x 23 in (84.5 x 58.4 cm)
1/50LOT 59
ESTIMATE: $4,000 — $6,000This ambitious work calls to mind two important lithograph diptychs by Kenojuak: Nunavut (Our Land) from 1992 and Silavut, Nunavut (Our Environment, Our Land) from 1999. All three were masterfully...This ambitious work calls to mind two important lithograph diptychs by Kenojuak: Nunavut (Our Land) from 1992 and Silavut, Nunavut (Our Environment, Our Land) from 1999. All three were masterfully executed by printmaker Pitseolak Niviaqsi and feature circular imagery symbolizing the earth, seasons, and the universal themes of regeneration and life cycles. However, Song of Spring diverges by focusing on the animals themselves, and remarkably, by transforming circular motifs into a spherical one. Birds and wolves morph across the surface of an orb, flowing into one another to create a mesmerizing, almost hallucinatory effect that sets this work apart from its predecessors.John Westren eloquently captures the vivid intensity of Kenojuak's imagination during this period of her career, "The mid-1990s through 2005 would see a revitalized Kenojuak Ashevak. This period was one of the most fertile, ambitious, and prolific of her career. I don't know what influences in Kenojuak's life might have encouraged this fecundity so late in her life, but I suspect that the rejuvenated printmaking program itself played no small part…The results of seeing her work writ large and in glorious Technicolor must have had an invigorating effect on her creative process…[S]he would move into works of movement and tremendous kinetic energy and on into dynamic large-scale prints that are more like paintings [1].
1. John A. Westren, "Toward the Millennium" in Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 261.
References: This diptych is reproduced in Leslie Boyd Ryan, Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2007), p. 286. The 1999 diptych Silavut, Nunavut is also reproduced, p. 232. Kenojuak's special commission Nunavut (Our Land) of 1992 is reproduced in Odette Leroux et al ed., Inuit Women Artists: Voices from Cape Dorset (Douglas & McIntyre/Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1994), p. 111.
Provenance
Collection of John & Joyce Price, Seattle, WA.