Lot 42
MOLLY LAMB BOBAK, R.C.A. (1920-2014)
Additional Images
Provenance:
Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, Montreal, QC;
Corporate collection, Toronto, ON
Note:
Sky showcases one of Bobak’s most popular subjects: the crowd. While this interest became evident during her time in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, she explained, “I think that it is an interest I have had ever since I was a kid. I simply love gatherings, mingling... It’s like little ants crawling, the sort of insignificance and yet the beauty of people all getting together.”[1] During periods spent living abroad, Bobak thrilled at painting lively scenes and streetscapes. Biographer Michelle Gewurtz notes that “after the birth of her second child, Anny, [Bobak] found it easier to focus on city vistas populated by groups of people, where detail became secondary to a sense of bustling life.” [2]
Bobak’s mature work saw increased facility as a colourist. Curator Cindy Richmond writes that “the underlying drabness of greyed blues and mat greens and browns gives way to sharper splashes of red and yellow and pink, and these new colours increase the dramatic intensity of the pictures markedly…Molly began to achieve greater control over her use of colour, and also to integrate it more effectively into the architectural structure of her pictures.” [3]
(1) Michelle Gewurtz. Molly Lamb Bobak: Life & Work. (Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2018), 20.
(2) Gewurtz, 42.
(3) Cindy Richmond. Molly Lamb Bobak: A Retrospective. (Regina: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 1993), 41.