Alex Janvier

Dating to an exceptionally strong period in Janvier’s career, Willow Point optimizes the artist’s mature classic style. The visual language of the work evokes the more subtle abstraction of his early imagery (see lot 209 of the present auction), while also suggesting organic systems, or even cartographic illustration, inviting interpretations that range from maps of memory, to evocations of spiritual or cosmological networks.

Introduced to the Bauhaus, Cubism, and Surrealism while studying under Marion Nicoll at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Janvier began developing an approach to painting that was a synthesis of Modernist techniques, and imagery inspired by Denesuliné life and images.[1] The resultant paintings are unique among both traditions.

Willow Point exhibits Janvier’s mastery of colour and spatial balance. The composition is notable among the artist’s work for its particularly sparing use of colour against the unprimed linen ground. A mass of saturated red draws the eye to the centre of the composition, but also encourages its drift outward by Janvier’s use of trailing whiplash line.

[1] Lee-Ann Martin, ‎Robert Houle, and ‎Alex Janvier, The Art of Alex Janvier: His First Thirty Years, 1960-1990 (Thunder Bay: Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1993), 9.

A special thanks to Janvier Gallery for their assistance confirming the title and date of the present lot.