PROVENANCE
Gallery Moos, Toronto
Acquired from the above by Dr. Luigi Rossi
Estate of Dr. Luigi Rossi

LITERATURE
Theodore Allen Heinrich, “The Intimate Cartography of Gershon Iskowitz’s Painting,” artscanada, May/June 1977, page 12
The Rossi Collection: A Circle of Friends, Kelowna Art Gallery, 2018, listed page 44

EXHIBITED
Kelowna Art Gallery, The Rossi Collection: A Circle of Friends, November 10, 2018 – January 20, 2019

Gershon Iskowitz painted Orange Mauve-C on the cusp of two key career moments in 1982: his retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the publication of Adele Freedman’s monograph Gershon Iskowitz: Painter of Light. The next year he had a solo exhibition at Marisa del Re Gallery, New York.

The shift in Iskowitz’s work in 1979 – 1980 was in contrast to his “ethereal” paintings of the 1970s. White-grey foregrounds first appeared in the early ’70s and were always painted last, to “frame” amorphous central forms. The prominent white-grey overpainting of Orange Mauve-C forms a rupture and an orientation, as if looking down through clouds to highlight sinews of bold undercolours (a development prefigured in his 1977 – 1978 watercolours). A hallmark for Iskowitz, beginning with his Parry Sound–inspired works in the late 1950s, had been observations of nature, but never literal as Theodore Heinrich noted, rather as “a source for intense chromatic adventure” and an “intimate cartography.”

Closely related to Orange Mauve-C are Orange Lilac-A (1979, collection of the University of Lethbridge), Red-M (1979, collection of Nickle Galleries, University of Calgary), the diptych New Violet Red-K (1979, Canada Council Art Bank) and Orange Violet-A (1979). Iskowitz continued this trajectory with bold colour foregrounds through 1983, before embarking on his last works, the Northern Lights and Septets series and Sunlight paintings.

For the biography on Dr. Luigi Rossi in PDF format, please click here.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars