Lot 16: Kazuo Nakamura 1926 - 2002 Canadian oil on canvas

Kazuo Nakamura 1926 - 2002 Canadian oil on canvas Inlets "31 x 37 inches 78.7 x 94 centimeters signed and on verso titled and dated 1972 on a label Provenance:MacMillan Bloedel Limited, Vancouver Private Collection, Vancouver Kazuo Nakamura was interned as a Japanese-Canadian during World War II. After his release, he trained at the Central Technical School in Toronto, he then joined Painters Eleven, a Toronto-based group dedicated to promoting abstract art in Canada. Throughout his career, Nakamura was obsessed with the challenge of creating order from chaos, and the existence of universal rhythms that connect mathematics and the natural world around us. Inlets, completed in 1972, articulates Nakamura's interest in the parallels between art and science with his regimented brush-strokes and unfaltering order. Nakamura was often referred to as the least expressionistic of the group Painters Eleven. His composition in Inlets is recognisably a landscape, and yet his mesmerising palette of cy blues and verdant greens entices the viewer into a complex and dispassionate dreamscape. The artist's contrast of rigid delineation with soft and flowing foliage delivers a silent order to an otherwise turbulent environment. Inlets is a superb example of one of Nakamura's most popular and important periods of work, examples of which are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. "