GERSHON ISKOWITZ "SUMMER SONG" 1966

Caviar20 is excited to be offering this important and large-scale canvas, from the first chapter of the Gershon Iskowitz's (1919-1988) lifelong career in abstraction. 

For most of the 1950s, Iskowitz incorporated representation into his art. By the 60s he had established a modest reputation in Toronto and beyond,  joining the Gallery Moos stable in 1964. The legend goes that in 1967 thanks to a Canadian Council grant, Iskowitz took a helicopter tour of Churchill, Manitoba. The experience of seeing the massive expanse of trees from above inspired a major redirection of his aesthetic and material and approach. 

While suggestive of an aerial landscape, "Summer Song" was actually created a year before the seminal helicopter trip. This canvas is part of a series of simplified paintings that emerged during a dramatic shift, just before the voyage. This was a pivotal moment in Iskowitz's career, when his mature abstract language was coming into focus. In the same year, Gallery Moos represented an important exhibition of his work, accompanied by a catalogue text from Harry Malcolmson that affirmed the artist's growing stature within Canadian abstraction.

Maintaining a connection to nature, Iskowitz applies bushels of denim blue and bright red, accented by jade green and marigold (a later favourite colour of the artist's). These groupings exist amid a luminous off-white-coloured ground -- suggestive of an aerial landscape or perhaps a view of the sky from below. Consider this passage from historian Theodore Allen Heinrich, quoted in historian Ihor Holubizky's biography on Gershon Iskowitz (which we highly recommend; it can be accessed online here):

“[Iskowitz] not only completely abandoned representation [but] altered his position with relation to it. The first new orientation in place of looking at was to look straight up from the ground level, the other was to be up at some height and look straight down. [...] This might be termed intimate cartography, poeticized by its sensibility to season change and the times of day or night, clear or overcast as expressed by light.”

This later 1960s period marked a significant moment in Iskowitz’s growing national recognition. Following his inclusion in the Sixth Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Painting and election to the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, the present canvas was later featured in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s survey of the Imperial Oil Collection, affirming its early institutional recognition. It is also worth mentioning that many of Iskowitz's paintings of the late 1960s are on a smaller domestic scale. It is only in the following decade that Iskowitz embraces large-scale painting. 

Most major institutions in Canada hold a painting from the late 1960s; This is a rare opportunity to acquire a work of such caliber and importance. To see a published image of this work, as well as other paradigms of his work in major institutions, Caviar20 recommends the Art Canada Institute's resources on Gershon Iskowitz.

Questions about this piece? Contact us, call +1.416.704.1720, or visit our Toronto Gallery.

“Summer Landscape #2" 

Canada, 1967

Signed and dated, lower right

Oil on canvas

65"H 50"H (work)

66.25"H 51.5"W (framed)

Very good condition

Provenance: 
Gallery Moos, Toronto
Imperial Oil Limited
Estate of Dr. Luigi Rossi

Literature:
Ihor Holubizky, "Gershon Iskowitz: Life & Work," Art Canada Institute, page 38.
"The Rossi Collection: A Circle of Friends," Kelowna Art Gallery, 2018, reproduced page 30 and listed page 44.

Exhibited:
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, "A Canadian Survey: Selected Works from the Collection of Imperial Oil Limited," January 12 – February 17, 1980; traveling in 1978 – 1980 to multiple Canadian venues, including the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; Art Gallery of Windsor; and Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, catalogue #15
- Kelowna Art Gallery, "The Rossi Collection: A Circle of Friends," November 10, 2018 – January 20, 2019

Note: price is $85,000 CAD.