Additional Images

Provenance:

Waddington's Auctioneers, Toronto, ON, December, 1982;
Private collection, Ontario

Note:

This exceptional composition by Kananginak is among the earliest prints made in Kinngait, pre-dating the first annual Cape Dorset print release in 1960. Credited with introducing printmaking to the North, artist and public administrator James Houston worked with local Kinngait artists, such as Osuitok Ipeelee and Kananginak Pootoogook to produce a small number of experimental prints in 1957 and 1958 which were released for sale to a limited test market in the fall of 1958.

Dedicated to his craft as well as his community, and confident that printmaking programs would bring much needed economic opportunity, Pootoogook became the first spokesperson of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative and eventually became president of the Board of Directors. [1] A brilliant printmaker and talented artist, Pootoogook’s gift for the humour of incongruity, and the power of stilled movement pervade many of his works. Here in this early print the artist has imbued his subject with proud majesty, and the composition with a sense of radiant calm.

(1) IAF, “Kananginak Pootoogook”, Inuit Art Foundation, Accessed April 23, 2022. Click here to read more