Drawing remained a lifelong and parallel practice for Gershon Iskowitz (1919-1988).
After immigrating to Canada in 1948, Iskowitz attended informal life-drawing sessions at the Artists’ Workshop in Toronto, producing quick studies of figures, portraits, and street scenes. By the early 1950s, his portrait drawings had developed into a distinctive form of immediate contour drawing, emphasizing the essential features of his subjects with minimal shading or tonality.Â
In 1954, Iskowitz made his first recorded Canadian exhibition appearance at the Art Gallery of Toronto, showing two drawings/watercolours. By 1955 he was developing a body of portraits and figure studies alongside his early landscape experiments.
"Portrait of a Friend" belongs to this formative period, when Iskowitz was establishing a new life in Toronto and developing relationships within the city’s emerging artistic community. Around this time, he became friends with artists Eric Freifeld and Yehuda Podeswa, whose portraits he also painted in 1954–55.
"Portrait of a Friend" exemplifies the directness of the artist's early portrait drawings. Executed in spare yet expressive lines, the work captures the sitter through a few carefully observed gestures rather than sustained description. The face emerges from an animated network of contours, while the loosely indicated shoulders and clothing dissolve into the surrounding paper. Areas of heavier, more emphatic mark-making animate hair texture and facial features, creating a striking contrast with the largely untouched ground.
Iskowitz uses the fluidity of the line to convey not only likeness but presence, allowing the sitter to emerge gradually from the page. The result is intimate and spontaneous, demonstrating the observational discipline that would remain fundamental to his practice even as his art moved increasingly toward landscape and, eventually, pure abstraction.
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"Portrait of a Friend"
Canada, 1955
Ink on paper
11"H 8"W (visible)
19"H 15"W (framed)
Overall good condition.
Note: price is $2,950 CAD
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