Sold for: $5,625

PROVENANCE
The Isaacs/Innuit Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario

LITERATURE
Iris Nowell, Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art, 2001, page 155

Experimentation with diverse media, from textile collages and sculptural plastic installations to abstract canvases and films, distinguished Joyce Wieland’s dynamic and visionary art practice. A vibrant and beloved member of the Toronto art scene, Wieland had her first solo exhibition of abstract canvases and collages at Dorothy Cameron’s Here and Now Gallery in 1960. Over the next decade her works would show at the Isaacs Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the National Gallery of Canada. Wieland’s work was responsive to her time, her environment, and her personal experiences. Throughout her career, she took up the visual languages of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art and integrated themes of intimacy, sexuality, politics, ecology and feminism. Untitled is a striking example of the abstract explorations that Wieland was producing in the early 1960s. However, as was the case with her other notable works of the period such as Redgasm (1960) and Time Machine (1959), Wieland incorporates organic and bodily forms into her abstractions. Two golden ovarian shapes ground the composition, while the washes of muted greys, violets and blues entwine to create a soft, visceral form, signalling an interior womb-like space. As Iris Nowell notes in her comprehensive biography, Wieland’s paintings in the early 1960s “are manifestly important in that they reveal both an interpretation of abstraction and a depiction of sexuality heretofore unexpressed in her work. What is more, the works represent the first intimation of Joyce’s artistic promise.” It is in early paintings such as Untitled that we see the nascent ingenuity and experimentation with both style and subject that would expand and flourish throughout Wieland’s indelible career.

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