Provenance:

Private Collection, New York, USA
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

Unique even among the many remarkable images from early years of the print program at Kinngait (Cape Dorset), Pudlo’s Running Rabbit from 1963 has long been singled out for its inventive composition, which contrasts a density in figuration with simplicity in form.

Speaking of the print in the Spring 1976 issue of The Beaver, Sheila Butler, along with her husband Jack, founding figures at the Sanavik print Cooperative in Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake), said of Running Rabbit “We were overwhelmed with the [1964 Cape Dorset print] exhibition… Another large print which I remember clearly from that show in 1964 is a stencil image of a direct front view of a rabbit, ‘Running Rabbit’ by Pudlo, 1963. Previously I had never thought that such a complete and vivid image could be possible with simple stencil technique. The memory of this great print influenced me deeply as I began to work with the Baker Lake people to produce stencil prints of their own.”[1]

Curator Odette Leroux, in the text accompanying the seminal Canadian Museum of History exhibition In The Shadow of The Sun: Perspectives on Contemporary Native Art, singles out Running Rabbit, noting of Pudlo “this innovative artist has a remarkable talent for synthesis, as can be seen in Running Rabbit. The shape is outlined, and the face is shown inside that shape. In this quasi-abstract treatment of the realistic subject we have a revelation of Pudlo’s interest in the possibilities of formal abstraction.”[2]

Collectors have rightfully observed that Running Rabbit, if inverted, appears to show a basking walrus in place of a rabbit. Jack Butler further speaking of the influence of the print expressed that “during the years immediately prior to going to Baker Lake, two images were becoming more and more central to my thinking as an artist: the 1963 stencil print from Cape Dorset entitled Running Rabbit (based on a drawing by Pudlo Pudlat) and the cut paper collages by Henri Matisse. Both were characterized by simplicity of means, directness of approach, and a
compression of many levels of meaning into a simple formal statement.”[3]

[1] Sheila Butler et al, Inuit Art: An Anthology (Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1988), 101-111.
[2] Odette Leroux et al, In The Shadow of The Sun: Perspectives on contemporary Native Art (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1993), 505-506.
[3] Jack Butler, “How the Time I Spent with the Inuit Influenced my Work as an Artist”, Inuit Art Quarterly (Toronto: IAQ, Summer 1987), 7-9.