Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Toronto, ON
Waddington's Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, 27 May 2019, lot 74
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

One of the early masters of Puvirnituq (Povungnituk) sculpture, Aisa Qupirualu Alasua (sometimes Kopeekolik) made his first stone carvings at the behest of James Houston, who visited the coastal camps around Puvirnituq in the spring of 1950. (1) An exceptionally gifted artist, Qupirualu was generally recognized within his community as the most talented among his Puvirnituq peers: no mean feat considering his contemporaries Charlie Sivuarapik and Samisa Ivilla. (2)

Tightly composed and finely polished, Mother and Child in Amauti, from ca. 1955 is bristling with fine detail. Early Puvirnituq sculpture often incorporated components made from ivory or bone. The use of these contrasting materials was a necessity for artists, who wished to include fine detail in the unforgiving stone of the region. The visual effect of the contrast draws the eye to the essential features of the face, or the tools fundamental to survival. Mother and Child in Amauti, more than any other work by the artist, reveals Qupirualu’s mastery of this technique. The contrasting eyes, teeth, ulu and other essential implements give the portrait an undeniable intensity.

(1) Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955 (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), 123.
(2) Wight, Early Masters, 123.

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