PROVENANCE
Jerrold Morris Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection
Canadian Art, Joyner Fine Art, November 25, 1994, lot 18
Private Collection, Toronto

As a member of the Toronto artists’ group Painters Eleven, Kazuo Nakamura would develop an approach to abstraction grounded in what he felt were fundamental forms and laws of the natural world. By the beginning of the 1960s, after the dissolution of the group, he would increasingly be drawn to the landscape as a subject, rendering windswept fields, glinting lakes and hazy forests in evocative monochromes of blue and green. The geography in these paintings is generalized rather than specific, with elements drawn from the artist’s memory of places he had visited. High horizons recall the BC mountain landscapes where Nakamura was interned during World War II, while the silhouetted littoral treelines evoke the northern forests and open spaces of Ontario lake country. These landscapes are not meant to represent the visible world, however. By focusing on the harmonious qualities of shimmering water and reflected horizon lines, Nakamura uses his landscapes to reveal the universal structures and geometries that underlie a seemingly chaotic natural world.

Blue Reflections, Two Horizons is an exceptional example of the artist’s work of this period. Painted in striking shades of brilliant blues and cloudy whites, a windy, tree-lined shore is reflected across a flickering expanse of striated water. The intricate patterns are mirrored and distorted, with the stretched surface of the lake suggesting a concealed depth or density beneath the flat surface of the picture plane. By dominating the canvas with these reflections, immersing our viewpoint into the expanded space between the twin horizons, Nakamura encourages a new sense of vision that reveals the inherent structures of nature.

Introspective and meticulous, Nakamura’s landscapes remain his most recognizable and enduring works. His paintings are held in major collections across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. In 2024, Nakamura was the subject of a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Kazuo Nakamura: Blue Dimension, which included the similar canvases Evergreen, Reflection (1961) and Landscape (1963).

All prices are in Canadian Dollars