While often acknowledged as a Canadian painter, Graham Coughtry spent a great deal of time in both Spain and France. Influences from his time in Europe such as Pierre Bonnard and Alberto Giacometti informed his work in several facets. From the expressive use of colour and abstraction of the human form, Coughtry insisted on creating rich impasto surfaces which further lend to great depth of his work. In 1962, art critic, Elizabeth Kilbourn, gave praise to his figurative work noting it’s “emotional penetration and subtlety.” Painted in 1958 and 1959 respectively, Portrait No. 1 and Portrait No.6 were executed during an interesting time in the artist’s career. After major success in his duo-exhibition with Michael Snow in 1955, Coughtry’s Night Interior (exhibited by Rukaj at Art Toronto 2020) was selected for the Biennial of Canadian art in 1957. Both Portrait No. 1 and Portrait No. 6 were featured in his one man show, Graham Coughtry: Painting and Drawings at The Greenwich Gallery which was warmly received by critics. In a 1961 article on Coughtry published in Canadian Art Magazine, critic Robert Fulford wrote that "in a 1959 one-man show [Coughtry] exhibited a series of what he called 'portraits.' These were not portraits in any usual sense - that is, they did not describe individual faces - but rather the impressions of the idea of the portrait: the idea of confrontation between painter and subject. [T]he surfaces were lush, varied and altogether admirable" (Robert Fulford, "A Survey of the Work of 24 Young Canadian Artists," Canadian Art no. 71 (Jan/Feb 1961), p. 20) The works were then purchased by and on-view at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian. Rukaj Gallery is pleased to present these two seminal portraits by a Canadian superstar.

Coughtry is represented in several public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.