Lot 84: Samuel Borenstein 1908 - 1969 Canadian oil on

Samuel Borenstein 1908 - 1969 Canadian oil on canvas Summer, Ste-Agathe 18 x 24 inches 45.7 x 61 centimeters signed and on verso titled on the gallery label Literature:William Kuhns and Léo Rosshandler, Sam Borenstein, 1978, page 62 Provenance:Galerie Walter Klinkhoff Inc., Montreal Private Collection, Vancouver Born in Lithuania, Sam Borenstein emigrated to Montreal in 1921. In 1939, he traveled to Paris, desiring to experience the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Maurice de Vlaminck and Chaim Soutine. In Van Gogh, Borenstein identified with a passionate spirit who risked everything for his art, and in Soutine, a powerful expressionism. When Borenstein returned to Montreal, it was with the influence of Fauvism and Expressionism resonating in his work. Quebec's villages and rural landscapes were the lifeblood of Borenstein's paintings, and in the early 1960s Ste-Agathe was often his subject, as it was within a few miles of the Lac Brûlé schoolhouse where he lived. The perspective of land abruptly rising was a favourite of Borenstein, pulling the viewer up into the sky, as in this work. His expressionist brush-stroke is in full force here, as is the brilliance of his colour palette on this sun-drenched day. Of the exuberance of his work, William Kuhns wrote, "His paintings burst with gusting energies....Perspective, scale, line and form.....became seething, elusive elements of a tumultuous vision.....in which a familiar landscape rippled, quaked and roared from within."