January Jubilee Ladies, 1961

Michael Snow, January Jubilee Ladies, 1961, chalk, gouache and paper collage on corrugated cardboard, 137.2 x 190.5 cm, Global Affairs Canada Visual Art Collection, Ottawa (C.C.73).
This monumental gouache collage is of five floating female nudes in various poses. Their bodies, rendered in red, blue, white, and various ochres, overlap with each other and with abstract forms within an ambiguous space. Curator and art historian Dennis Reid has suggested that this sensuous composition was influenced by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s famed painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Regarded as the first Cubist work, Les Demoiselles depicts a group of five prostitutes in a brothel. January Jubilee Ladies also contains five female figures, although they are more conventionally feminine compared to Picasso’s women, who possess disjointed and angular features.
Gallery

Jazz Band, 1947

Still Life: Red Goblet, August 1952

Colin Curd About to Play, 1953

Ocul, 1954

The Table, 1955

Table and Chairs No. 1, 1956

A to Z, 1956

Move, 1957

Colour Booth, 1959

Quits, 1960

Window, 1960

Blue Monk, 1960

Lac Clair, December 1960

Secret Shout, January 1960

The Drum Book, September 1960

Seated Nude (Red Head), 1955

Seated Nude, 1955

January Jubilee Ladies, 1961

Rolled Woman II, 1961

Four to Five, 1962