CANADIAN POST~WAR & CONTEMPORARY ART - Heffel

HEFFEL FINE ART AUCTION HOUSE 19
10 WILLIAM KURELEK
ARCA OC OSA 1927 ~ 1977
After the Blizzard in Manitoba
mixed media on board, initialed and dated 1967
and on verso signed, titled, dated and inscribed
donated to Mrs. Gerald Hollyer and for Kingsmill
Company in gratitude for services renderened [sic]
in purchase of a house 1965
20 x 28 1/2 in, 50.8 x 72.4 cm
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the Artist, 1967
Private Collection, Toronto
LITERATURE:
Philip Earnshaw, director, The Passion of Christ According to Saint Matthew:
William Kurelek, film, 2005
In addition to being one of Canada’s most accomplished and interesting
artists, William Kurelek wrote and illustrated many award~winning
children’s books. His joyous explorations of childhood themes in his art
made this a natural extension of his work. And while his art and writings
can be enjoyed for their simple and exuberant content, to do so is to miss a
deeper layer of meaning. A child of the Depression and the oldest of seven
children in a hard~working Ukrainian Orthodox immigrant family, his
youth was spent on the open prairie of Manitoba. He showed an early
aptitude for drawing, but this career path was not supported by his
farming parents, particularly his father. Their troubled relationship was
“an agony to them both”, and Kurelek would ultimately suffer depression
and suicidal despair. Largely self~taught, he attended the Ontario College
of Art briefly, but was drifting and searching for a path. He traveled to San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he discovered the Nicolaïdes method
of drawing, which he would later credit with helping him discover his
own style. Keenly interested in religious iconography and wanting to see
the world’s great art, he traveled to England in the early 1950s. There, his
mental health failed and he was treated for depression. While in the
hospital, he painted the cathartic masterwork The Maze, wherein he
explores in painful detail the unhappiness in his life. He achieved success
as a painter as a result of his pain, and in an interesting twist, a pious
Catholic nurse who cared for him during this time inspired Kurelek to
revisit religion, and he converted to Catholicism in 1957.
Returning to Canada as an established painter, he explored the issues in
his life through his art. His subtle blend of everyday events and religious
themes are engaging on many levels. Presented to us as Canadian scenes,
Old World religious imagery is everywhere in his work. Families walk to
church, priests come for dinner, mothers and sons appear together in
harmony. The scenes are full of the simple beauty of rural life ~ families at
rest and play, celebrating birthdays, tending animals, doing the mundane
chores. Additionally, these everyday acts are given deeper meaning in the
details and surface treatment of the works. One might compare the
surface of Kurelek’s paintings, which are hard and smooth, often
glass~like, to inlaid enamel and religious icons of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. His unique method of incising dried but uncured
paint with a ballpoint pen, and using coloured pencils to etch, scratch and
draw on the paint’s surface, furthers this effect. The contrast of the rich
surface and the often simple subjects makes for an interesting
juxtaposition of form and image. This is particularly the case in After the
Blizzard in Manitoba where we see a group of children playing wildly on
the cliff of snow cut by a plough after a heavy blizzard. The scene is largely
comprised of snow, but handled with Kurelek’s unique style, the vast
whiteness itself is a dance of light and shadow as the colour of the sky
repeats in the children’s snowsuits and the distant sleigh. The scene is
almost fantastical, as the snow blankets the telephone poles almost to
their tops which jut, cross~like, from the surface of the massive drift.
Without worry of injury, children slide, tunnel and climb. Only the dog
hesitates to bound into the fray. The work is absolutely joyous ~ children
playing in the snow ~ yet, we are reminded by Kurelek of the brevity of
youth as the adult in the scene heads out of the picture in a sleigh, his back
to the fun, intent on some serious adult purpose.
ESTIMATE: $50,000 ~ 70,000