Venetian, circa 1965

Private Collection Sotheby’s Contemporary Art, auction, New York, 8 October 1988, lot 154 The Collection of Joseph & Blanche Blank Sotheby’s Contemporary Art, auction, New York, 6 October 2020, lot 730 Private Collection, Toronto

“Sorel Etrog to William Withrow”, April 21, 1966, box 13, folder 10, Sorel Etrog Fonds, Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Pierre Restany, “Sorel Etrog”, Munich, 2002, page 77 Florian Rodari, ‘Secret Paths, 1999-2000’ in Ihor Holubizky (ed.), “Sorel Etrog: Five Decades”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2013, page 103

Shortly before moving to Toronto in 1963, Sorel Etrog embarked on a trip to Italy, France, Greece, the Netherlands and Israel. In Florence, he encountered Etruscan art for the first time, which would soon inspire the artist’s Links period, which consisted of sculptures and paintings featuring a motif of two elements connected by a loop. This theme would dominate his art for eight years, during which he used it to articulate the existential contrasts of human life. Deeply influenced by ancient carving and sculpture techniques, Etrog notes: “I was lucky to have discovered the Etruscan links which showed me how to join the multiple shapes organically. The Link created a tension at the point where they joined, where they pulled together or pulled apart.” As he further explained, “I saw in [the link] a strong device for connecting and creating tension, mirroring the tension in our very existence with and within the outside world.” “Venetian” is a fine example from this series: the bronze sculpture is composed of various abstract forms that are simultaneously geometric and organic, linked together at various angles. The three-dimensional artwork can be viewed from all angles, providing multiple perspectives of the twisting and turning forms. In a letter to the AGO director at the time, William Withrow, Etrog wrote: “I am witnessing how these past immediate experiences are getting in my new work. I feel certain hardness; the fluid line is being replaced by the links. It gives a more mechanical look. Yet I want to believe that I still speak about the human condition.” He used the link to represent the mechanical as well as the organic, recalling both the type of link found in construction and architectural materials, as well as the anatomical links in the human body. “Venetian” was completed in the early stages of the Links series, in circa 1965, while Etrog was achieving commercial success in North America. The artist had his first travelling exhibition in 1965, which opened at Gallery Moos in Toronto before moving to the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City, the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles, and terminating at Montreal’s Galerie Dresdnère. In late 1965 he moved to Florence, where he rented both an apartment and a studio. He began casting his work at the renowned Michelucci Foundry in the nearby town of Pistoia, and this is where most of his sculptures would be cast into bronze for the remainder of his career.