Posts By: Cowley Abbott

Cowley Abbott’s live auction on June 8th marked the second of three landmark live auctions dedicated to a prestigious private collection of Canadian art. A selection of exceptional historical artworks offered in the evening auction saw a bidding frenzy, with most artworks in the sale exceeding – and often doubling, tripling or more – presale… Read more »

Tonight! It is finally time for our two-session Live Auction of Important Canadian and International Art! The Cowley Abbott team could not be more excited to present these artworks for sale this evening @globeandmailcentre. It has been a privilege to handle these works of art and share them with collectors, clients and art lovers. Join… Read more »

Beginning as an Automatiste painter in the 1950s, Rita Letendre was influenced by Paul-Émile Borduas’ revolutionary gestural abstract paintings of the period. Although the Automatistes were instrumental in the evolution of her style, Letendre developed a singular vision in her body of work that resulted in a unique style that pushed boundaries of colour, light… Read more »

Rob Cowley chats with CP24 Breakfast’s Nick Dixon and Jennifer Hsiung ahead of the June 8th Cowley Abbott Spring Live Auction. They discuss masterpiece work by Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, Andy Warhol, Tom Thomson and David Bowie, each on offer during the upcoming sale.

Cornelius Krieghoff moved to Quebec City in 1853, encountering a vibrant and growing city. As Dennis Reid remarked: “Almost as large as Montreal at a population of some 58,000, close to 40 per cent anglophone (as opposed to the then slightly more than 50 percent anglophone component of the Montreal population) it was the military… Read more »

American artist Andy Warhol once declared “I want to be as famous as the Queen of England”. A leading figure of the Pop Art movement of the 1950s and 60s, Warhol was famous for appropriating familiar images from consumer culture and mass media, including many silkscreen prints of public figures. Determined to become a celebrity… Read more »

Joan Mitchell was a prominent American artist closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement, the New York School, and international abstract painting of a gestural sort. She spent most of her professional life in France, first in Paris in the 1950s, and from 1967 in Vétheuil, Claude Monet’s home from 1878-1881. While in France she… Read more »

A founding member of the second group of “Les Plasticiens” in Montréal in 1955 and constantly innovative throughout his long career as a painter, poet, and university teacher, Guido Molinari was a prominent spokesperson for abstract art from the 1950s until the 2000s. There is no abstract painter in Canada who delved deeper into the… Read more »

According to the David Bowie expert Andy Peters: “This artwork is another ‘DHead’ of Trent Reznor and includes part of the lyrics written in David’s hand at the foot to NINs big hit ‘Hurt’ which is a unique selling point. This painting never existed in his original inventory of 66 official DHead paintings most of… Read more »

Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson first painted on Lake Superior in October 1921. They took the Algoma Central Railway from Sand Lake, Algoma north to Franz, where they caught the Canadian Pacific train travelling west to Rossport and Schreiber. Harris would return to paint and draw on the north shore of Lake Superior almost every… Read more »