Sold for: $10,000

PROVENANCE
Mazelow Gallery, Toronto
An Important Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape: A Retrospective Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1981, reproduced page 232 and listed page 287

EXHIBITED
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1981, traveling in 1981 – 1982 to the Art Gallery of Windsor, Edmonton Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery, catalogue #144

A founding member of Painters 11, Jock MacDonald engaged with abstraction as many other artists of his generation did: gradually. Like fellow P11 member Jack Bush, MacDonald was an accomplished commercial artist and landscape painter, who over time came to express a fully abstract painting style. As early as the 1930s, MacDonald began to explore symbolism and formal abstraction, which eventually lead to his automatic fantasias in watercolour and oil of the 1940s, such as Bird and Environment, sold by Heffel in November 2023. By the end of the 1950s, empowered by the capabilities of new synthetic paints, he was creating dreamlike works of floating forms adrift in hazes of atmosphere, appearing ethereal and substantial at once. Both this work and lot 205 in this session are key expressions of this moment, and, in fact, appear side by side in the catalogue for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s 1981 celebratory retrospective Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape. With MacDonald’s sudden and unexpected passing in 1960, Canada lost a key artist at the peak of his abilities.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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