Artwork by William Perehudoff,  AC-78-20

William Perehudoff
AC-78-20

acrylic on canvas
signed, titled and dated 1978 on the reverse
24.75 x 54 ins ( 62.9 x 137.2 cms )

Auction Estimate: $20,000.00$15,000.00 - $20,000.00

Price Realized $27,600.00
Sale date: November 23rd 2017

Provenance:
Circle Arts International, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature:
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Toronto, 2007, page 290
Nancy E. Dillow, William Perehudoff: Recent Paintings, Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 1978, page 7
During the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops held in 1962-63, William Perehudoff was introduced to Post-Painterly Abstraction by art critic Clement Greenberg and American artist Kenneth Noland. Perehudoff had a great interest in colour experimentation and sought to define his own unique style. In” Abstract Painting in Canada”, Roald Nasgaard refers to Perehudoff's paintings' “plays of light and dark, of transparency and opacity [as] subtle and sensuous.” Many of the artist's wide horizontal canvases of the mid-to-late 1970s were constructed of coloured ground transversed by vibrant parallel bars of colour. AC-78-20 contains what Dillow described as “the horizontal stretch of colour...[that] vibrates like a violin string, activating the entire canvas.” The long parallel stripes incite thoughts of a sunset over a prairie landscape; the purity of the level, immense fields which were central to the artist'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.