Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

Sculpted while in residence at the Mountain Sanatorium (now Chedoke Campus) in Hamilton, Ontario, this early sculpture of a woman with braided hair dates circa 1958 and is by the Akulivik artist, Peter Ussuqi Anauta.

The work is an exciting departure from most known sculptures by Anauta and may represent stylistic cross polarization at the Mountain Sanatorium where many Inuit artists of far-flung origin convalesced in the 1950s, among them important artists Henry Evaluardjuk, Kenojuak Ashevak, and Simon Pov.[1]

Staunch in form and lightly abstracted in style, the sculpture’s eyes and teeth are emphasized by the artist’s use of inlay, which was uncommon for Akulivik, but was being used 160 kilometers to the south in the work of Inukjuak artists such as Simon Pov, Johnny Inukpuk, Isa Smiler, and others. The sculpture is one of three known closely related examples of the subject completed by Anauta, and one of two examples we know of in private hands.[2]

[1] Sutherland, Caitlin, “Carving Home: The Chedoke Collection of Inuit Art”, Inuit Art Quarterly. December 5, 2017.
[2] Art Gallery of Hamilton, Carving Home: The Chedoke Collection of Inuit Art, https://www.artgalleryofhamilton.com/exhibition/carving-home-chedoke-collection-inuit-art.