2 James Kivetoruk Moses Mixed Media - "Home Alaska"

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Exceptional Antiquities, Ethnographic and Fin...

By Artemis Gallery

Jun 29, 2023

Set Reminder 2023-06-29 10:00:00 2023-06-29 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Exceptional Antiquities, Ethnographic and Fine Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/exceptional-antiquities-ethnographic-and-fine-art-13031
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• Lot Description
  James Kivetoruk (Kivitauraq) Moses (Inupiat/Inupiak, ca. 1899-1982). Two mixed media works on paper, ca. 1960s. Both signed and inscribed "Home Alaska" on lower left. A pair of sophisticated mixed media (pen and ink with watercolor) compositions by Alaskan self-taught artist James Kivetoruk Moses. The work on the left depicts an Inuit fisherman navigating the ice floes of Alaska, and the work on the right depicts an Inuit seal hunter (with his catch) heading back home. Both are delineated with Moses' signature rigid postures, pleasing color palette which set him apart from his contemporaries who generally worked in an achromatic manner, and observant eye for detail. A special pair of works by James Kivetoruk Moses, mounted in a custom frame. Prior to becoming an artist, Kivetoruk Moses was a hunter and a trapper in Alaska; however, an airplane crash resulted in serious injuries to his legs that ended this chapter of his life. While recuperating, Kivetoruk Moses took up drawing, an activity he had enjoyed as a child. His art honored the life he knew - people, places, and events that he either experienced directly or observed; hence, he has been praised for his work as both an artist and a documentarian. Size (sight view of art on right): 7.6" L x 11.4" W (19.3 cm x 29 cm) Size (sight view of art on left): 7.6" L x 10.875" W (19.3 cm x 27.6 cm) Size (frame): 14.125" L x 30.255" W (35.9 cm x 76.8 cm)
  
  About the artist: Alaskan native James Kivetoruk Moses was an Outsider Artist whose art career began late in life following injuries due to a plane crash. During his youth and middle years, Moses was a hunter, trapper, and reindeer herder in Siberia and his native Cape Espenberg on the Seward Peninsula. However, in 1954, due to his injuries from a plane crash, Moses' hunting days came to an end, and he decided to teach himself to paint. Dubbed an Arctic Henri Rousseau, Moses is known for honoring his ethnic heritage with his art, depicting hunts, polar bears, walrus, maritime voyages, shamans, the arrival of white men in northern Alaska, Inuit legends, and the ceremonial Wolf Dance.
  
  According to Michael Engelhard, "Moses' hunter-naturalist eye for detail matched a knack for narrative angles. His colored-pencil, watercolor, and India ink landscapes and seascapes deftly rendered clothing, subsistence and social activities, ice, weather, even light and shadows typical of the seasons or hour of day. Species-specific fur, wood grain in boards, tan lines, chin tattoos, lip plugs, tonsure hairdos, and ashen cloud-bellies brushing horizons segueing from powder-blue to peach reflect skills he kept honing. Seal blood spatters onto snow, shorthand for the brusque northern existence." (Michael Engelhard - "The Life and Paintings of Alaska Native Artist James Kivetoruk Moses" ? Alaska Magazine - October 1, 2021)
  
  James Kivetoruk Moses' art has been collected by esteemed museums such as the California Academy of Sciences, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City."
  
  On the verso is an obituary for James Kivetoruk Moses that reads, "Honored Eskimo Artist Passes Away / NOME (AP)-Artist James "Kivetoruk" Moses has died after a long illness. He was 82. / Raised in Cape Estenberg, at the northern tip of Seward Peninsula Moses was a subsistence hunter and trader. Injuries sustained in a 1954 plane crash ended his hunting career, and Moses taught himself to paint. / His works, done primarily in pen and ink and watercolors, depicted Eskimo legends and Native life in the early part of this century. / Those works were featured in American Heritage Magazine and other national publication. / He is survived by wife, Bessie; and a brother." (source unknown - handwritten date "10-15-82" above)
  
  Provenance: private Hood River, Oregon, USA collection
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
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  #178599

  Condition

  Both artworks are signed and inscribed "Home Alaska" on lower left. Both are mounted in a custom frame and have not been examined outside the frame but appear to be in very nice condition as is the framing. There is an obituary clipped from a newspaper and hand dated "10-15-82" on the verso. Suspension hardware on verso.
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