Abstraction, 1977

Acquired directly from Walter Moos, Toronto A Private Canadian Collection

Peter Mellen, Landmarks of Canadian Art, Toronto, 1978, page 240

Upon immigrating to Canada after the Second World War, Iskowitz was heavily influenced by the Canadian landscape in his abstract works. Rather than rendering the land in traditional landscape art, the artist instead expressed this inspiration through the abstraction of bright contrasting forms. Iskowitz drew on his personal recollections of experiences with landscape for his work, explaining that he would take “...the experience, out in the field, of looking up in the trees or in the sky, of looking down from the height of a helicopter. So what you try to do is make a composition of all those things, make some kind of reality...That's painting.” Not by coincidence, this aesthetic can be linked back to the artist's experience granted by the Canada Council to view the northern landscape by helicopter in 1967. In many of his oil paintings of the 1970s, the artist applied large patches of white pigment over the brightly coloured areas, creating an aerial view as if looking down between clouds. In this watercolour composition, the negative space of the white paper acts as the cloud formations, creating a minimalist yet striking version of Iskowitz’s quintessential abstract works.