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Lot 6Chief Henry Speck, Beaver Tsow, silkscreen on paperChief Henry Speck, Beaver Tsow, silkscreen on paper. Henry Speck was a Tlawit'sis (Kwakwaka'wakw) painter, carver, and dancer.
Speck (Chief Udzistalis) was born in 1908 in Kalugwis (Karlukwees) on Turnour Island. He was raised in the customary practices of the Kwakawaka'wakw Nation, a hereditary chieftainship, where Speck's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather each acted as chief. In 1922, at the age of 14, Henry's uncle, Chief Bob Harris, sponsored him as an initiate in the sacred Hamatsa Society, which practices winter ceremony and dance and is one of the nation's most prestigious groups. Speck worked as fisherman until his father's death, at which point he took up the role of chief. He was also a painter, carver, and dancer, eventually teaching ceremonial dance to other initiates.
Speck began painting when he met Gyula Myer, an artist and gallerist, at Alert Bay. Myer collected North West Coast art and encouraged Speck and others to experiment with painting on paper, prompting the beginning of a new artistic style which developed alongside the Kwakwaka'wakw graphic tradition. Initially, Speck followed the Kwakawaka'wakw tradition of decorating carvings and other surfaces (house screens, masks, blankets and boxes) with graphic painting.
In the 1950s and 60s, North West Coast art experienced a shift towards two-dimensional art, prompting artists to apply their graphic painting style to paper. Speck's two-dimensional works featured minimalist compositional strategies to indicate depth of field, perspective and movement. By combining Kwakwaka'wakw cosmology with modernist aesthetics, his work was both documentary and abstracted.
In 1964, Speck had his first solo exhibition at the New Design Gallery in Vancouver, BC. He was one of the earliest artists to produce prints from his paintings through the New Design Gallery. At the time Bill Reid said that Specks drawings are imaginative in their concept, often going far beyond anything attempted before in Kwakiutl art.
Speck also exhibited at the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and his work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Royal British Columbia Museum, the Canadian Museum of History, the Glenbow Museum, the San Diego Museum of Man, and the Campbell River Museum.
In 1965, he became artistic director of Chief James Sewid's Kwakiutl House project in Alert Bay.
Henry Speck passed away on May 27, 1971 in Alert Bay, British Columbia.
The book Mapping Modernism: Art, Indigeneity, Globalism published by Duke University Press in 2018 contains a chapter by Karen Duffek titled An Intersection: Bill Reid, Henry Speck and the Mapping of Modern Northwest Coast Art.
Frame: 26.5" x 20" Image: 20" x 14.5"
Note: Very good condition.
From a private Kamloops Collection
Estimate$250 - $350
Final Bid
$120
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