The 1975 exhibition: Ottawa Exhibition
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À la Galerie: La peinture canadienne des années trente
Le Droit
25 Jan 1975
Announcement of the opening of the Canadian Painting in the Thirties exhibition on January 30, 1975 at 9 p.m. at the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition retraces the evolution of painting in Canada from the nationalist milieu of Toronto to the internationalist school of Montreal, and will be on tour at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Glenbow Alberta Institute, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Saskatoon Gallery and Conservatory Corporation, and the Musée d?art contemporain de Montréal. The exhibition was organized by Charles Hill, Assistant Curator of Post-Confederation Art, and includes more than 100 works. Hill has written a bilingual, two-volume catalogue that includes seven studies, reproductions of all the works and documentary photographs of the artists. The Group of Seven, in particular Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson and Arthur Lismer, had a major influence on a new generation of painters such as Yvonne McKague Housser, Jock Macdonald and Emily Carr, through Toronto?s Art Students? League and the Canadian Group of Painters. Many artists, such as David Milne, Charles Comfort, Carl Schaefer, Paraskeva Clark, Bertram Brooker, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, L.L. FitzGerald, Jack Humphrey and Miller Brittain, freed themselves from the Group of Seven?s tradition to explore new facets of Canadian art. The catalogue includes a study of Lawren Harris?s first abstract paintings. In Montreal, a group of figurative painters formed around Edwin Holgate. These painters were Prudence Heward, Sarah Robertson and Lilias Newton. Direct opposition to the Group of Seven was led by several artists united around John Lyman in Montreal. These included Goodridge Roberts, Louis Muhlstock, Paul-Émile Borduas, Alexandre Bercovitch, Eric Goldberg, Philip Surrey, Fritz Brandtner, and Marian Scott, precursors of the Contemporary Art Society and the Automatistes of the 1940s. The exhibition is being presented at the National Gallery of Canada until March 2, 1975.
