T00141

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Lot 10
  • 10

William Kurelek 1927 - 1977

Estimate
50,000 - 70,000 CAD
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Description

  • William Kurelek
  • Wintertime North of Winnipeg
  • signed and dated 1962 on the reverse
  • mixed media on board
  • 103 by 143.5 cm.
  • 40 1/2 by 56 1/2 in.

Provenance

Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, Washington, D.C., 1966
Sold by the Order of the Trustees of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., to benefit its acquisition program

Exhibited

Kurelek's Vision of Canada, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, June 14 - August 14, 1983, no. 2

Literature

Joan Murray, Kurelek's Vision of Canada, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 1982, p. 21, reproduced.
Ramsay Cook and Avrom Isaacs, Kurelek Country: The Art of William Kurelek, Toronto, 1999, p. 45, reproduced in colour.

Catalogue Note

Of all the subjects that Kurelek explored and remembered in his intensely prolific career, those that seem to touch the heart and mind of more people than any others are his recollected scenes of his boyhood on the Canadian prairies.

This large painting, with its small figure making its solitary way across a vast expanse of the great plains in western Canada, captures the experience of the skier perfectly. Kurelek, with his uncanny knack for illustrative narrative, makes us feel acutely what we are looking at. The empathy viewers have with the subject is also enhanced by the point of view Kurelek has selected for us, which is an aerial one, as if we were hovering above the subject somewhat, and could see a further horizon across the wintry country that we otherwise might not.

Kurelek said about this work: "In this painting, I'm trying to convey the isolation of man in the vastness of the prairies, especially in winter when nature is particularly naked and merciless. Silhouetted on the horizon to the south, is the lone rock escarpment on which Stoney Mountain Penitentiary was built. The boy on skis has ventured into the snowfields in a kind of instinctive dare against Nature and is now equally determinedly heading back for the security of the farm buildings."