2025 December | Hodgins Art Auctions

Notes:

signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Former collection of James Allan (Jim) Coutts C.M. (1938-2013), Nanton, AB. Jim Coutts was a friend of Janet Mitchell’s and acquired this painting directly from the artist. The work was subsequently purchased by a friend (private collection, Toronto ON).

Notes:

signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Former collection of James Allan (Jim) Coutts C.M. (1938-2013), Nanton, AB. Jim Coutts was a friend of Janet Mitchell’s and acquired this painting directly from the artist. The work was subsequently purchased by a friend (private collection, Toronto ON).

While now recognized as an important Alberta artist, Janet Mitchell spent the early part of her fifty-year art career relatively unknown to collectors, balancing a full-time job with her art practice to support herself and her family. She was fifty years old when she was finally able to dedicate herself fully to her art and, by 1970, when well into her sixties, Mitchell finally hit the height of her artistic career. The next 15 years, 1970-1985, would be her most prolific: “It was more of a releasing of myself,” she noted of this period, “The paintings took on a newfound freedom.”

Janet Mitchell has become known for works that blend fantastical elements with reality – where the unconscious and the absurd fantasies of the mind mingle with the outside world and everyday life. During the 1970s, Mitchell developed a series of skillfully constructed acrylic paintings in which she contrasts colourful elements with white, negative space. “City Street”, painted in 1974, is an example from this period. Here, abstracted swaths of colour juxtaposed against white, transform into a dynamic scene, where figures, milling about the foreground, appear more clearly as the eye moves through the work; the abstracted buildings anchor the background – colourful silhouettes against the sky with geometric smoke flowing from their chimneys. As Peggy Armstrong notes in her biography of Mitchell, her technique “accentuates the blend of the internal with the external through shapes and colours that are interlocked with white. The effect is powerful and striking.”

Reference: “Janet Mitchell: Life and Art” (Peggy Armstrong; Hyperion Press Limited; Winnipeg; 1990)

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signed and titled verso

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signed and titled verso

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signed, titled and dated verso

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signed and dated lower right; signed, titled and dated verso

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signed lower right; signed, titled and dated verso

Provenance: Canada House Gallery, Banff AB

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signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Woltjen/Udell Gallery, Edmonton AB (label verso)

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signed and dated upper left

Note: This work is illustrated on page 143 of “Ciccimarra: A Biography” (Frank Nowosad; Fuller Technical Publishing; 1988). A copy of the book accompanies the painting.

Richard Ciccimarra was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to Victoria, British Columbia in the early 1950s. Ciccimarra was a largely self-taught artist, and in Victoria, as a young adult, he quickly became involved in the local art scene. In 1971, he became one of the founding members of the Limners: a group of mainly ex-patriate artists in the Victoria art scene that also included Herbert Siebner, Maxwell Bates, Myfawny Pavelic and Robin Skelton, among others.

Ciccimarra’s work is known for its melancholic nature, and his practice is often compared to that of fellow Austrian artist Egon Schiele. With pale, ghost like figures set against hollow, dark spaces, Ciccimarra established a haunting sense of ennui in his work. The work “evensong”, the title of this painting, comes from Old English, and refers to an evening worship or church service; with this title, Ciccimarra adds a layer of context to the somber gathering of the two figures in the dark.

Notes:

signed and dated lower right

Provenance: Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art, Calgary AB (original documentation attached)