Additional Images

Provenance:

S. Family Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

A rising star among Inuit artists in the 1980s, Tutuyea Ikkidluak’s talent for figuration, eye for detail, and his ambitious, complex compositions promised to make the artist an important name in the Kinngait (Cape Dorset) art scene. However, the tragic untimely death of Ikkidluak in 1989 cut short his career at the age of 27, only two years after his first solo show at The Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art in Toronto in 1987.

Although Ikkidluak’s work is much sought out by collectors, few works are well known to the broader public, perhaps with the exception of his culture-bridging statement on poverty and starvation, Starving Ethiopian, carved during the famine in Ethiopia in 1983-1985 and published in Inuit Art Quarterly in 2021.[1]

[1] Napatsi Folger, “How One Inuit Sculpture Links Two Very Different Parts of the World”, Inuit Art Quarterly. 17 Nov 2021. https://www.inuitartfoundation.org/lite/iaq-online/how-one-inuit-sculpture-links-two-very-different-parts-of-the-world

Mother and Child with Catch is one of forty-five works in the present auction from a pioneering and important Toronto collection of Inuit art, the S. Family Collection.

Distinguished by its remarkable diversity, and uniformly high quality, the collection was built on over fifty years of dedication. Acquisitions were made both from the leading dealers and private collectors of the period, as well as directly from artists during several excursions to the north, including to Qamani'tuaq (Baker Lake), and Arviat.

Although the S. Family organized a handful of exhibitions specializing in sculpture, many artworks from their personal collection have remained largely unknown to the collector community. Significant sculptures and graphics come from artists including Davie Atchealak, Ooviloo Tunillie, Parr, John Tiktak, Joe Talirunili, Kiugak Ashoona, Nuna Parr, Aqjangajuk Shaa, and Mathew Aqigaaq.