Lot 122
DAVIDIALUK ALASUA AMITTU (1910-1976) PUVIRNITUQ (POVUNGNITUK)
The One Who Suddenly Grew Big, c. 1958
stone, 8.5 x 6 x 3.25 in (21.6 x 15.2 x 8.3 cm)
inscribed with disc number, signed, and inscribed, "E9 824 / DEVIDE / ᐅᓂᑲᑐᐊ ᓄᓚᔪᕕᓂ".

Provenance
Galerie Elca London, Montreal;
Acquired from the above by John and Joyce Price, Seattle.

Davidialuk’s syllabic inscription roughly translates as “a long story of one who suddenly grew big.” A quite similar sculpture (in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History) is illustrated in Zebedee Nungak and Eugene Arima’s book Inuit Stories: Povungnituk (1969; reissued 1988), p. 68; the fascinating old legend as recorded by Davidialuk is translated on pp. 69-71. Briefly: in a time of starvation, travelers return to an igloo to find only one survivor, an infant girl grown to gigantic proportions and wearing her mother’s amautiq around her neck. The infant gives chase, but the fleeing hunters whip her and throw her sealskin scraps to slow her down. She eventually tires and turns into a rocky island. Davidialuk loved old stories but was known to be unfussy about details when depicting them; here the half-naked infant is clearly a baby boy. This astonishing sculpture is an early masterpiece by the artist and reveals Davidialuk’s rustic realism and his flair for drama at their most brilliant.

References: A sculpture of the same subject (in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History) is illustrated in Zebedee Nungak and Eugene Arima, Inuit Stories: Povungnituk, (Gatineau: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1988), p. 68; the fascinating legend recorded by Davidialuk is translated on pp. 69-71. A possibly related subject is illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight, Early Masters: Inuit Sculpture 1949-1955, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2006), p. 120; and in George Swinton, Sculpture of the Inuit, (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972/92), fig. 373, p. 172.