Sold for: $31,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Connecticut
Sold sale of Canadian Post-War & Contemporary Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, November 26, 2009, lot 9
Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
Matthew Teitelbaum, Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years, Mendel Art Gallery, 1987, page 20, reproduced page 38

EXHIBITED
Parma Gallery, New York, Modern Canadian Painters, 1956
Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Paterson Ewen: The Montreal Years, November 20, 1987 - January 3, 1988, traveling in 1988 to the London Regional Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Windsor; Concordia Art Gallery, Montreal; and St. Mary's University Art Gallery, Halifax

During the time of strongly polarized philosophical and aesthetic battles that raged within the Quebec art scene during the late forties and early fifties, Paterson Ewen was blessed with strong connections to both the English and French artistic communities and the various groups that were active at that time. From his earliest days as an art student under the influence of progressive representational artists like Goodridge Roberts, to his membership in the Association des artistes non-figuratifs de Montréal and his awareness of the Automatist and Plasticien groups, he absorbed their many philosophies and visual strategies without becoming defined by any one of them. It was in 1954 that he first began to show abstract works, and by 1956, when this painting was produced, he had developed his own philosophy and approach to abstraction.

Ewen stated, “I’m trying to use the knowledge I’ve acquired to create a painting as original - as personal - as possible, that will express a point of view in terms of plastic discovery and will have an artistic order. I’ve chosen this direction because I feel the basic values of all painting are non-figurative.”

All prices are in Canadian Dollars