signed with the artist’s monogram and dated 1977 lower right; inscribed “JK” on the reverse; titled on a label on the reverse
20 × 16.5 in (50.8 × 41.9 cm)
Auction Estimate:$25,000 - $35,000
Sale date:June 9, 2021
Price Realized
$55,200
(including Buyer's Premium)
Provenance
Estate of the artist
Isaacs Gallery Ltd., Toronto
Private Collection, Ontario
Literature
William Kurelek, To My Father’s Village: The Last Days and Drawings of William Kurelek, Toronto, 1988, unpaginated, reproduced as “Haystacks” with an ink drawing of the haystacks, also reproduced on the back outer cover
One of his final paintings, “Haystacks and Ducks” was executed by William Kurelek during a 1977 visit to Ukraine, the artist wishing to experience and document the people, customs and land of his heritage and to determine if he felt he was more “Ukrainian or Canadian”.
After a brief trip to Ukraine in 1970, the visit allowing Kurelek only four hours in his father’s village of Borivtsi, the artist immediately applied for a visa to return. He would apply each year that followed until permission was finally granted in 1977.
A sharp contrast to the war-torn and sometimes horrifying childhood years which his father, Dmytro, experienced in his village prior to immigrating to Canada in 1923, Kurelek’s scene from the edge of Borivtsi is one of peace and beauty. As dusk delivers a sky dazzled with red and gold, a woman quietly walks the field as horses and ducks wander and feed. The rooftops of the village are protected by the surrounding foothills with the spire of the village church reaching into the clearing sky.
Referencing the related ink drawing of the three haystacks within this composition, the editor notes in “To My Father’s Village” that haystacks are “...like agricultural fingerprints, different from country to country, sometimes from area to area. These conical haystacks are typical of the countryside around Borivtsi, the Carpathian foothills village in the province of Bukovyna, where Kurelek’s father was born.”
Despite Kurelek’s health being in decline prior to his journey, he would create more than one hundred drawings and six paintings (three of which would remain in Ukraine as gifts) during the trip. Within days of his late-September return to Toronto, he was admitted to hospital and would succumb to cancer weeks later, passing away on November 3rd, 1977 at 50 years of age. A central theme within the compositions throughout his career, “Haystack and Ducks” provides the viewer with one of Kurelek’s final representations of Ukrainian culture and life on the farm.
