Lot 270: Jaan Poldaas (Canadian, born Sweden 1948) Study for Twelve Colour Pair

Study for Twelve Colour Pair
signed and dated 'POLDAAS 1996' (lower right)
mixed media
38.1 x 50.8cm (15 x 20in).

Provenance:
Private collection, Toronto

As explained in Abstract Painting in Canada: "It begins with the artist deciding on the three shades each of four colours: red, green, blue and grey. The project is to make painting pairs in which each panel will be made up of four parallel vertical bands of colour selected from the twelve options (use eight, discard four).....For once in selecting and arranging the four colours of his first panel, he allowed himself to indulge his own tastes. But such irresponsible freedom was hard-won, because it demanded to be countered by inevitable consequences, the strictest of rules set in place to determine how the second panel would be composed, to insure that it was a kind of opposite."

Literature: Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Douglas and McIntyre, 2007, pp.276-278.