ARCA CGP OSA P11
1917 - 1996
Canadian
Still Life
oil on canvas
signed and dated 1958 and on verso titled on a label
40 x 60 in, 101.6 x 152.4 cm
Estimate: $15,000 - $25,000 CAD
Sold for: $37,250
Preview at:
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto
Sold sale of Important Canadian Art, Sotheby’s Canada in association with Ritchie’s, February 25, 2002, lot 197
Private Collection, Ontario
LITERATURE
David Burnett & Marilyn Schiff, Contemporary Canadian Art, 1983, page 50
EXHIBITED
Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 1958
One of Walter Yarwood’s most notable traits was succinctly summed up by Marilyn Schiff and David Burnett in their 1983 study of contemporary Canadian art after 1940. In the chapter about Toronto artists they wrote: “The radical character of Painters 11 came principally through the younger members of the group, with Town and Ronald, and with Hodgson, Yarwood and Mead. These five, though clearly, even fiercely, independent, were united by the explosive energy of the surfaces of their paintings and by their unwillingness to concentrate their approaches on a single line of research…” Further evidence of Yarwood’s independent spirit and reluctance to be overly influenced by outside sources was his refusal to invite the influential New York critic, Clement Greenberg, to visit his studio when he came to Toronto in 1957. Yarwood may have titled this painting Still Life, however the vivid palette and bold forms of this striking composition are anything but “still”. Like a subtle source of energy, the small black orb at the upper left seems to be pushing the larger ovals to its right, urging them to burst from the confines of the canvas. Here, we can sense the artist’s admiration of several New York abstract expressionist artists, chiefly Franz Kline and, in this work, notes of Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell. Nonetheless, Yarwood demonstrates his consistently independent approach in producing abstract images unlike those created by his closest contemporaries.
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