Two Figure Series Xix, 1964

Provenance:
Isaacs Gallery, Toronto

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Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Avrom Isaacs, Toronto

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Private Collection, Toronto

Exhibitions:
Toronto Painting: 1953-1965, National Gallery of Canada 15 September - 15 October, 1972 and 10 November - 10 December, 1972, the Art Gallery of Ontario, cat. no. 63.

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Modern Painting in Canada, Edmonton Art Gallery, 1978, cat. no. 24.

Literature:
Toronto Painting 1953-1965, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1972, page 21, no. 63, reproduced in colour and unpaginated, cat. no. 63, reproduced.

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Terry Fenton and Karen Wilkin, Modern Painting in Canada, Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, 1978, page 71, reproduced in colour.

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Barrie Hale, Graham Coughtry Retrospective, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 1976, page 29, figure 22, reproduced.

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Graham Coughtry Two Figure Series 1962-64, exhibition catalogue, The Isaacs Gallery, October 9-26, 1983, reproduced.
Notes:
Coughtry began working on the Two Series after his return to Toronto from Ibiza in 1961 – a series that would bring him much acclaim later in the decade. The series is inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses whose heroine, Salmacis, consummated her love for Hermaphroditus by uniting with him so closely that the two became one. With Two Figures Series XIX, “the essence of the myth of Hermaphroditus recurs, and which of the figures is male and which female, which Hermaphroditus and which Salmacis, becomes an increasingly ambiguous matter.” A critic at the time said “Coughtry is caught up in the peculiar passion of being human in the twentienth century… his two figures come to terms with each other in an isolated, frightening … terrible kind of love.” Henry Malcolmson said “The sustained energy and concentration of this tour de force is unprecedented in Canadian art and, with the exception of certain of Picasso’s efforts, I can recall no similar examples of such virtuosity in modern art.”