PROVENANCE
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Calgary
Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 10, 2000, lot 202
Private Collection, USA
Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 22, 2012, lot 65
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Vancouver

Lawren Harris’s journey into abstraction began after he left Toronto for Hanover, New Hampshire and Sante Fe, New Mexico. After returning to Canada in 1940 and settling in Vancouver, his evolution in abstract painting continued. Harris’s work from 1958 often showed fields of dancing calligraphic lines, and in LSH 84 calligraphic symbol-like forms are applied to tall spear-shaped figures. The vertical impulse of these forms recalls the up-reaching shapes of Harris’s Rocky Mountains, Arctic icebergs and the heroic bare stumps of Lake Superior. These inscribed shapes have a feeling of text, and the forms in LSH 84 have a monumental, Stonehenge-like presence. The use of shapes in a symbolic manner was embedded in Harris’s imagery - his interest indicated by one of the books in his library, Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols. Rich hues of blue inscribed with subtle lines create a sky-like background that echoes the vertical forms, while the warm yellows and golds of the calligraphic shapes pop forward, imprinting themselves upon our consciousness like a mysterious and evocative ancient language.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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