Additional Images

Provenance:

Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, ON;
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, ON;
Private Collection, Toronto, ON;
Private Collection, Ontario

Note:

This work is what is known as a cartoon—a full-scale preparatory drawing—the word derived from the Italian cartone, a large sheet of paper or card. A technique well in place for millennia, using a cartoon allowed artists to work out complex compositional elements on paper rather than on textured canvas. Here, Kurelek rubbed lead on the back of the paper, allowing him to then lay the sheet onto the canvas and trace the outlines on the front, leaving a precise impression onto the surface, from which he could paint with confidence. Cartoons are often discarded or damaged during the transfer process, making them exceedingly rare.

This cartoon was the foundation of Kurelek’s 1952 Zaporozhian Cossacks, now in the collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Art historian Andrew Kear, writing for the Art Canada Institute, notes that this painting “is Kurelek’s earliest attempt to articulate the deep ambivalence he felt toward his father, Dmytro.” Dmytro is depicted as a fearsome Cossack leader at the centre of the composition. The Cossacks–from the Turkic kazak, or “free man”–first settled the steppes of southern Ukraine in the late 1400s, and are deeply associated with Ukrainian national identity.

Started in December 1951, Zaporozhian Cossacks was painted at Kurelek’s parents’ farm in Vinemount, Ontario, after a period spent working as a lumberjack in Northern Ontario and Quebec. The time spent in the lumber camps allowed Kurelek to save up enough money to travel to Europe, which he did in early 1952. Before departing, he presented Zaporozhian Cossacks to his father as a gift.

Kear notes the influence of Russian artist Ilya Repin’s painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, 1880–91 on Kurelek’s work. The latter kept a reproduction of the painting, deciding to “exaggerate the animated expressions of the figures in Repin’s original.” Other influences include muralists Diego Rivera, José Orozco and David Siqueiros, whose work Kurelek became familiar with during a period spent in Mexico. Kear also suggests that the figure in front of the Cossack leader might be a self-portrait, bearing a resemblance to the young Kurelek.