Additional Images

Provenance:

Private collection, British Columbia

Note:

Born in Kugaaruk, Mark Tungilik later moved to Naujaat where he carved both the exquisitely refined ivory miniatures, and the larger, often powerfully elemental figures for which he is perhaps best known. In 1945 Tungilik carved a series of Christian “spirit” figures for Father Franz Van de Verde, the Oblate missionary in Kugaaruk, one of which was presented to Pope Pius XII in 1948. [1]

Likely dating to the early 1960s, in this iconic muskox we see Tungilik at his most restrained and elemental. A relatively large composition for the artist, the figure has weighty, but nonetheless compact presence. A superb early iteration of a subject often revisited by the artist, who continued carving until his death in 1986.

(1) Maija Lutz, Hunters Carvers, and Collectors: The Chauncey C. Nash Collection of Inuit Art, (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012), 114.

Related Works:
National Gallery of Canada, Acc. No. 39273. Click here to read more


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