Pudlo Pudlat (1916-1992) Canadian/Inuk/Inuit, Signed and Numbered Stencil Print. Signed and titled in Inuk syllabics at bottom in pencil, along with the date 1963. Numbered 19/50 in pencil at bottom. Embossed with the Canadian Eskimo Art Committee stamp lower left. Title written on back in pen along with attribution and number again: "Running Rabbit." 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 24 3/4 x 19 3/4 in. 

Sight Size: 23 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. 

Pudlo Pudlat was born on February 4th, 1916 at Kamadjuak Camp, Baffin Island, Canada. Pudlo 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. Until he was six, he lived around Coral Harbour, and later he moved to the region of Lake Harbour, now called Kimmirut. His younger sister Françoise Oklaga became an artist, although she was adopted by another family at a young age and he only learned of her success later. In 1950 he married fellow Inuk artist Innukjuakju Pudlat, and they remained together until her death in 1972. In the late 1950s 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 became interested in art. Pudlo began drawing in the early 1960s after he abandoned the semi-nomadic way of life and settled permanently 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, and these events shaped his style and beliefs. He began by carving sculpture, but he found carving difficult because of an arm injury, so he switched to drawing around 1960. With further encouragement 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, and the objects which he encountered throughout his travels, particularly airplanes, became prominent in his subject matter. In 1972 one of Pudlo’s prints was selected for reproduction on a UNICEF greeting card. His preferred medium evolved into a combination of acrylic wash and colored pencils, and by the early 1980s his works were in the collections of most Canadian museums. His first solo exhibition was in Mannheim, Germany in 1989, and his second was held at the National Gallery of Canada, two years before he died on December 28th, 1992. Pudlo was the first Inuk artist to achieve such honors, and left a body of work that included more than 4000 drawings and 200 prints. He is considered one of the most important Inuit artists of the 20th Century.

Commensurate with age.