Artwork by William Perehudoff,  AC-77-6

William Perehudoff
AC-77-6

acrylic on canvas
signed, titled and dated 1977 on the reverse
76 x 41.75 ins ( 193 x 106 cms )

Auction Estimate: $30,000.00$20,000.00 - $30,000.00

Price Realized $15,217.00
Sale date: November 22nd 2016

Provenance:
Private Collection, Calgary
Literature:
Roald Nasgaard, “Abstract Painting in Canada”, Toronto/Vancouver, 2007, page 290
Nancy E. Dillow, “William Perehudoff: Recent Paintings”, Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 1978, page 7
The Emma Lake Workshops of the early 1960s profoundly impacted the work of Saskatchewan artist, William Perehudoff. During these workshops, he was introduced to Post-Painterly Abstraction by art critic Clement Greenberg and American artist Kenneth Noland. Many of the artist’s magnificent horizontal canvases of the mid-to-late 1970s were constructed of coloured ground transversed by vibrant parallel bars of colour. Nasgaard notes how these works exhibit “plays of light and dark, of transparency and opacity, [which] are subtle and sensuous.”

“AC-77-6” contains “the horizontal stretch of colour...[that] vibrates like a violin string, activating the entire canvas.” The long parallel stripes incite thoughts of the prairie landscape; the purity of the level, immense fields that were central to Perehudoff’s life and work.

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William Perehudoff
(1919 - 2013) RCA

William Perehudoff was born in Langham, Saskatchewan and maintained a connection to this area throughout his life. In 1944, the Saskatoon Art Centre opened, and this provided Perehudoff with early and important access to art. Within a couple of years he was exhibiting regularly in group exhibitions such as the Saskatoon Exhibition and the Art Centre fall show. Throughout this phase of his development as an artist, he farmed in the summer and devoted himself to painting and his art education in the winter. Like many artists of the time, Perehudoff had been influenced by the motivations and methodologies of social realist artists such as Diego Rivera.  Perehudoff took instruction from the influential French muralist Jean Charlot, as well as Amédé Ozenfant in New York, the French Purist and associate of Le Corbusier.  Kenneth Noland, a very important colour field painter, was also a major influence to his work. Since the 1960s, Perehudoff was a central figure in Canadian abstraction. The effect of the flat plains and open skies that are so dramatically present throughout Saskatchewan seem to be detectable in his work. William Perehudoff received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1994 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Regina in 2003. He was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998.