Roald Nasgaard, “Abstract Painting in Canada”, Vancouver/Toronto, 2008, page 244
After immigrating to Canada from Poland in 1949, Gershon Iskowitz started painting landscapes. Previously it was his time at the Dachau concentration camp that had influenced his subject matter. But it would be a trip from Winnipeg to Churchill, Manitoba that would change his work. As Roald Nasgaard writes, “The experience was transforming, revealing grandeurs of space and intensities of colour he had never imagined.” That year he produced the Autumn Landscape series, which would affect his subject matter and style going forward.
Iskowitz would carry this new style into his work in the 1970s. Nasgaard continues, “Before 1972 was over, Iskowitz painted out the last vestiges of direct nature references and let the curtain of dappled paint increasingly fill the expanse of his picture plane, covering it with a pulsating dance of vibrant colour.” In “Variation on Green #1” the artist continues this dance, employing an intense glowing green ground and loosely painted areas of yellow, blue, and orange that poke through and vibrate across the surface.
