Tukana by Louis Comtois

Provenance:
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Toronto

Literature:
Roald Nasgaard, “Abstract Painting in Canada”, Vancouver/Halifax, 2007, page 327

Montreal-born artist Louis Comtois left for Paris and then settled in New York in the early 1970s. The artist stated: “I was lucky to arrive in New York at a great period, that of minimal art which followed close on the masters of American Abstract Expressionism. I was thus able to assimilate some decisive portions of the history of art....” Nasgaard describes how “it is the paintings from the second half of the 1970s...that operate within the framework of the chromatic abstraction of Montreal. Their compositions are made up of vertical bands and panels in rhythmic interplay.” In “Tukana”, the wonderful nuances of tones on each of the three panels become increasingly apparent during an extended viewing of the painting. Works with similar compositions to “Tukana” were shown at the exhibition “Louis Comtois: Paintings 1974-1979”, first held at the Art Gallery of Ontario in March of 1980, and travelled to Halifax, Kitchener and Saskatoon.