Sold for: $52,250

PROVENANCE
Gallery Moos, Toronto
Acquired from the above by an Important Private Collection, Toronto, August 1977

Gershon Iskowitz made a shift in his painting beginning in 1967, after receiving a grant from the Canada Council to visit Churchill, Manitoba. Here Iskowitz found twofold inspiration: firstly from the clarity of colour, space and light in the northern landscape; and secondly from the aerial perspective provided by chartered recreational planes and helicopters, which allowed the painter to experience these qualities. Several more trips north followed, first to James Bay in 1971, then to Yellowknife in 1973 and 1977. From each trip the painter returned with a renewed creative fervour and experimental energy, producing abstractions of increasing complexity.

Following the second Yellowknife trip, Iskowitz found the confidence to employ bolder colours located in neutral negative space; sweeping forms in extravagant blues and brazen reds dominate these compositions. Highland in Red #3 is characteristic of this productive period of the artist’s career, both in its vibrancy of colour and its monumental scale. An intense red form dominates the composition, nearly split in the middle and reaching out to the edges of the canvas. Smaller red forms crowd at the edges, while studs of blue, green and yellow flurry across the field. While not explicitly a landscape, the inspiration hinted by the title is palpable, and the whole lush surface calls to mind the vast topographies and glittering aerial cloudscapes of the North.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars