Lot 60: GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A., AUTUMN-H, oil on canvas, 54 ins x 45 ins; 137.2 cms x 114.3 cms

GERSHON ISKOWITZ, R.C.A.AUTUMN-Hoil on canvassigned, titled and dated 1982 on the reverse 54 ins x 45 ins; 137.2 cms x 114.3 cms Provenance:Miriam Shiell Fine Art, TorontoPrivate Collection, TorontoLiterature:The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation, The Gershon Iskowitz Prize: 1986-2006, Transcontinental Litho Acme, Montreal, 2009. Joan Murray, Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century, Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1999, page 133.Born in a small city in Poland, Gershon Iskowitz (1921-1988) immigrated to Canada in 1949. A survivor of the Holocaust, he remained haunted by unspeakable memories until the early 1950s, and his work from this earlier period shows him struggling with such themes in vivid, traumatic detail. In 1967, however, he received a Canada Council for the Arts travel grant that allowed him to hire a helicopter and fly from Winnipeg to Churchill. Having never before seen the landscape from above, Iskowitz was moved and inspired, and this momentous journey would inform the rest of his practice. Colour became paramount to his work, and he began favouring abstraction over representational form. Iskowitz had realized the transcendent power of art. Chosen to represent Canada at the 1972 Venice Biennale, Iskowitz and his work were regarded as the embodiment of the triumph of light over darkness. Autumn-H is the eighth work in the extended Autumn series. Here, colours erupt onto the canvas with radiant joy. By the 1980s, Iskowitz was electrifying his compositions, adding intensity to his contrasts and sharpening the delineation of form. In 1982, the year this work was painted, Gershon Iskowitz was given a major one-man retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Curated by David Burnett, the show then travelled to the art galleries of Windsor, Montreal, London, Calgary and to Canada House in London, England.Estimate: $25,000–30,000