Estate of the artist (inventory no. R88)
Private Collection, Toronto
Literature
Esther Trépanier, Marian Dale Scott, Pioneer of Modern Art, Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec, 2000, pages 228-29
Marian Mildred Dale Scott’s artistic output follows an interesting trajectory, from her early semi-abstract work to the pure abstraction of the 1960s. “Untitled” is from a series Dale Scott did in the sixties, in which she explored and experimented with geometric abstraction; the influence of the American Formalists and Les Plasticiens from Quebec is quite evident. However, instead of a line or a hard edge, Scott has made abstraction her own by utilizing the areas of raw canvas to break up the elongated triangular shapes of green, red, blue, yellow, black and white. Also eliminated is an aggressive brushstroke, which has been replaced by a restrained application of pigment. Esther Trépanier recalls an interview Dale Scott gave in 1967 in which she notes, “... each new stage of her practice grew out of the one that had gone before. In the preceding years the heavily textured paint layer she employed had been organized along increasingly geometric lines.”
