Sorel Etrog - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York Wednesday, November 15, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Despite its impression of balance and weightlessness, Sorel Etrog’s War Remembrance, 1961–1962, carries the burden of traumatic war memories that loomed large in the artist’s experience. One of the most influential 20th century Canadian artists, Etrog was born in 1933 to a Jewish family in Romania, where he and his family suffered from state-organized violence and anti-Semitism during World War II. Later settling in Toronto in 1963, where his international career began to take off, Etrog would continually channel his experience as a survivor of Nazi and Soviet aggression into his art. Through mediums of sculpture and painting, he grappled with the fortitude and vulnerabilities of the human body. 

     

    War Remembrance’s direct reference to violence places it among Etrog’s most recognizable and important bronze sculptures, with variants found in important institutions such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Franklin D. Murphy Sculptural Garden at the University of California, Los Angeles. The rounded spirals in the sculpture bend and twist into each other in a manner that resembles the organic shapes of a human body and the tension within it. Underneath, a triangular dart pierces through the biomorphic form, perhaps suggesting a soldier’s bayonet. This intrusion shifts the artwork from lyrical abstraction to jarring symbolism, serving as a reminder of the lingering presence of World War II in the artist’s psyche. 

    “... my search is for a language of forms possessing two fundamental elements: one of organic calligraphy which will evoke warmth of earthiness; the other a geometric calligraphy which will compel us by its strength.”
    —Sorel Etrog

    First created in 1960–1961 and later recast, War Remembrance belongs to the first body of Etrog’s sculptural works made of bronze, a medium that would become a hallmark of his practice. Beginning with the process of plaster molding followed by lost-wax bronze casting, Etrog imbued his subjects with detail and texture. The result, as seen in the present work, blends the monumentality of the industrial world and the intimacy of human experience. The interpenetrating composition of War Remembrance also sheds light on Etrog’s profound meditation on connections, continuity, and intricacies of the human condition— a germinal idea that would later inspire his celebrated painting series, Links

    • Provenance

      Estate of the Artist
      The Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Winnipeg
      Waddington’s, Toronto, May 28, 2018, lot 31
      Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Toronto, Scarborough College; London, Public Library and Art Museum; Rothmans Art Gallery of Stratford; Hamilton, McMaster University; St. Catharines, Rodman Hall; University of Guelph; Kingston, Agnes Etherington Art Centre; Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brantford; Waterloo Lutheran University; Art Gallery of Oshawa, Sorel Etrog: One Decade, September 16, 1968–November 2, 1969, no. 14, n.p. (illustrated)
      Paris, Centre Culturel Canadien, Sorel Etrog, January 20–May 15, 1978, no. 2, pp. 2, 12 (illustrated, p. 2)

    • Literature

      William J. Withrow, Sorel Etrog: Sculpture, Toronto, 1967, p. 23 (another variant illustrated)
      Carlo L. Ragghianti, Sorel Etrog: 1958–1968, Florence, 1968, no. 3, p. 60 (another variant illustrated)
      Pierre Restany, Sorel Etrog, New York, 2001, pp. 12, 15, 19–23, 26, 64 (another variant illustrated, pp. 12, 64; Rose Fried Gallery, New York, installation view illustrated, p. 15)
      Joyce Zemans, Sorel Etrog, Painting and Drawings 1963–1971, Burnaby, 2008, fig. 1, p. 3 (another variant illustrated)
      Ihor Holubizky, ed., Sorel Etrog: Five Decades, Ontario, 2013, p. 27 (another variant illustrated)

191

War Remembrance

stamped with the artist's name "ETROG" on the base
bronze
sculpture 29 3/8 x 42 1/2 x 20 in. (74.6 x 108 x 50.8 cm)
base 6 5/8 x 19 3/4 x 13 7/8 in. (16.8 x 50.2 x 35.2 cm)
overall 36 x 62 1/4 x 33 7/8 in. (91.4 x 158.1 x 86 cm)

Executed in 1961–1962.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$70,000 - 100,000 

Sold for $69,850

Contact Specialist

Annie Dolan
Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
+1 212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session

New York Auction 15 November 2023