Sold for: $11,700

PROVENANCE
A gift from the Artist to a Private Collector, Saskatchewan, circa 1958 - 1959
By descent to the present Private Collection, Ontario

Despite their smaller numbers and relative physical isolation, a group of young artists working and teaching in Regina were to make a significant and long-lasting impact on the visual culture of the Canadian Prairies and beyond. Saskatchewan-born Roy Kiyooka became an integral part of that culture, having studied under Jock Macdonald and Illingworth Kerr at the Provincial Institute of Technology in Calgary (later the Alberta College of Art). Prairie Sky was painted shortly after Kiyooka took up his teaching post at the School of Art, Regina College and around the time that he first participated in the renowned Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops. Although his paintings of the 1960s were to take a different direction, this 1957 work reflects the artist’s roots in a landscape dominated by wide, moving skies and low, glimmering horizons. Kiyooka moved to Vancouver in 1960 and, despite having great success and productivity producing purely abstract work for another decade, he stopped painting and became a much-admired teacher, poet, photographer and performance artist. In 1975, he was honoured with a retrospective exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars