Additional Images

Provenance:

Waddington's Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, 27 Nov 1986, lot 967
An important Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

Beginning in the mid 1950s, before taking up drawing Kenojuak Ashevak and her first husband Johnniebo expressed their visions in stone. Kenojuak continued carving a modest number of sculptures until the end of her long career, and Johnniebo carved until his death in 1972. Attribution of sculptures by the pair can be difficult as both are documented as having signed some of each other's artworks, and possibly collaborated on others.[1]

The present sculptures date ca. 1960 and are among the couple’s earlier examples. Confidently sculpted and finely finished, they exhibit less exaggerated, more life-like proportions than many of Kenouak’s or Johnniebo’s later investigations of avian subjects.

In the 1990s images of the two sculptures were shown in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) to artist and studio manager of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, Jimmy Manning. When Manning was asked who they were made by, he scoffed at the apparent naivety of the enquiry, answering that they were the work of Kenojuak.[2]

[1] Richard C. Crandall, Inuit Art A History (North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000), 142.
[2] Jimmy Manning, personal communication with the author, ca. 1999.