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Pudlo Pudlat
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Name
Pudlo Pudlat
Died
December 28, 1992, Cape Dorset, Canada
Movies
Ausstellung: Fish Plane, Heart Clock
Pudlo Pudlat (Pudlo), (February 4, 1916 at Kamadjuak Camp, Baffin Island, Canada, - December 28, 1992, at Cape Dorset) was an Inuit artist whose preferred medium was a combination of acrylic wash and coloured pencils. His works are in the collections of most Canadian museums. At his death in 1992, Pudlo left a body of work that included more than 4000 drawings and 200 prints.
Pudlo Pudlat lived for much of his life in the Kimmirut region in what is now the Canadian Territory of Nunavut, hunting and fishing with his family along the southwest coast of Baffin Island. Pudlo began drawing in the early 1960s after he abandoned the semi-nomadic way of life and settled in Cape Dorset. He experienced firsthand the radical transformation of life in the Arctic that occurred in the 20th Century and reached its peak in the 1950s.
Until he was six, he lived around Coral Harbour; later, he moved to the region of Lake Harbour, now called Kimmirut. In the late 1950s, when he was already in his 40s, he moved to Kiaktuuq near Cape Dorset to recover from a bout of tuberculosis. It was there he met Inuit art pioneer James Archibald Houston and began his career as an artist.
Pudlo spent 33 years creating art. He began by carving sculpture, but he found carving difficult because of an arm injury, so he switched to drawing around 1959 or 1960. Initially encouraged by James Houston and then by Terry Ryan of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, he embraced drawing and later printmaking and painting as these media were introduced in the north. Pudlo occasionally traveled south and to other parts of the Arctic for medical treatment. The objects he encountered his travels, especially airplanes, are prominent in his subject matter.
In 1972 one of Pudlo's prints was selected for reproduction on a UNICEF greeting card. Pudlo travelled to Ottawa to attend the opening of an exhibition of the works. He remembered it as the first work for which he was invited south and accorded public recognition.
Pudlo's last prints appear in the annual Cape Dorset Print collection and catalogue of 1993.
Chronology of Pudlo's artistic career
1990 - Opening of "Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing", the first solo show for an Inuit artist at the National Gallery of Canada.
1989 - Travelled to Mannheim, Germany, to attend the opening of his solo exhibition at the Inuit Galerie.
1980 - A single lithograph commission "In Celebration" was undertaken by Pudlo, to commemorate the anniversary of the Canadian Guild of Crafts in Montreal, Quebec. This work is also included in the annual Cape Dorset print catalogue in 1980.
1979 - Commissioned by the Canadian Guild of Crafts Quebec, Montreal, to create a lithograph to commemorate the first exhibition of contemporary Inuit art held at the Guild in Montreal.
1979 - Queen Elizabeth Hotel Commission. Honouring 29 "Great Montrealers" Pudlo produced a lithograph entitled "Shores of the Settlement". The print was included in the annual Cape Dorset print collection and catalogue in 1979. The artist travelled to Montreal to attend the presentation.
1978 - Commissioned by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to create two designs to be silkscreened onto banners for the DIAND headquarters lobby in Ottawa; Pudlo travelled to Oakville, Ontario, to work on the designs at Sheridan College.
1978 - Pudlo's 1976 print "Aeroplane" was reproduced on a Canadian postage stamp.
1976 - Pudlo was one of four Kinngait (Cape Dorset) artists commissioned to produce a collection of prints for the first UN Habitat Conference which was held in Vancouver, Canada. The prints appeared in the annual Cape Dorset print collection and catalogue in 1981.
1976 - Attended the Toronto opening of the annual Kinngait (Cape Dorset) print collection at the Innuit Gallery of Eskimo Art.
1972 - Pudlo Pudlat’s design, along with designs by four other Canadian Inuit artists, was chosen for a series of UNICEF greeting cards.
Artistic themes
Pudlo's art is characterized by a playful sense of humour and a fascination with the trappings of modern life, especially airplanes. His early drawings are simple outlines made with lead pencil. In the mid-1960s, Pudlo began to work with coloured pencils and felt-tipped pens, and his art became more elaborate. In many ways Pudlo's work symbolizes the paradoxes of the encounter between traditional Inuit culture and modern life.
"Pudlo's works over the years demonstrate his keen visual sense, his versatility and innovativeness in subject matter and technique — tempered by his sense of humour — his knowledge of traditional life on the land, and his acknowledgement of the changing times.... Pudlo's thinking/drawing process is a truly creative approach, done both consciously and unconsciously. In the 1978 Cape Dorset print catalogue (page 67) Pudlo talks about his drawing: At times when I draw, I am happy, but sometimes it is very hard. I have been drawing a long time now. I only draw what I think, but sometimes I think the pencil has a brain too." Jean Blodgett, "Grasp Tight the Old Ways", 1983
Solo exhibitions
2000 Pudlo Pudlat: Print Retrospective, The Isaacs/Inuit Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
1996 Southern Exposure: Original Drawings by Pudlo Pudlat, Feheley Fine Arts, Toronto, Ontario
1995 Pudlo: Original Drawings, Albers Gallery, San Francisco, California
1994 Pudlo Pudlat aus Cape Dorset, Inuit Galerie, Mannheim, Germany
