Two new exhibitions open at the McMichael this June
Art and Society in Canada 1913- 1950
Mary Pratt: Allusions
May 22, 2007 Kleinburg, ON – The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is opening two shows this June to launch the gallery’s busy summer season. On June 2 the gallery will open Art and Society in Canada 1913-1950 and, on June 30, Mary Pratt: Allusions.
Art and Society in Canada 1913-1950, curated by Charles Hill and organized by the National Gallery of Canada, looks at three generations of Canadian artists and their visions of the role of art in shaping society. The exhibition comprises more than forty works from the National Gallery’s collection, including paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture.
Art and Society looks at the social, political and aesthetic goals of the Group of Seven, the Social Realists and the Automatists combining contemporary texts with works of art dating from 1920 to 1951 to convey the dynamism of the debates around Canadian art during these important decades. The economic, social, and political crises of the 1930s and 1940s challenged such Social Realist artists as Fritz Brandtner, Paraskeva Clark, Miller Brittain, and others who felt that landscape painting and abstraction were extraneous to contemporary life.
The formation of the Contemporary Arts Society in Montreal in 1939 marked the beginning of radical changes in Canadian art and the birth of the third generation artists – the Automatists. Paul-Émile Borduas and a number of younger artists, including Jean-Paul Riopelle, rejected the oppressive religious and political conformity of contemporary Quebec society and articulated new social and artistic values.
Art and Society in Canada: 1913-1950 continues at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection until August 19 2007.
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Mary Pratt: Allusions opens at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on June 30 and runs until September 30, 2007.
Newfoundland-based, nationally acclaimed realist painter Mary Pratt is renowned for her beautiful, seductive still life paintings, two of which, Glassy Apples and Peach Compote are included in this exhibition that looks at Japanese woodblock prints inspired by these and other of her paintings.
The exhibition includes selected prints from the Transformations series of woodblock relief prints resulting from a collaborative partnership with Japanese master printmaker Masato Arikushi of Vancouver. For this project, the artist chose to limit her selection of images by using a single still-life theme – studies of fruit. The thematic approach employed by Mary Pratt provides an overall visual continuity to reinterpret the presentation of common objects in new and engaging ways. Ultimately this process has resulted in a series of delightful, creative Japanese woodblock prints, twelve of which are included in Mary Pratt: Allusions.
In addition to the remarkable prints selected from the Transformations series, this current exhibition includes eleven process prints produced at various stages in the development of the final works. Also on display and complementing Mary Pratt: Allusions, is a complete set of the forty woodblocks used in the creation of just one of the prints for the Transformations series. The inclusion of these woodblocks provides a rare opportunity for viewers to appreciate the complexity of the printing process required for successfully executing this series of images.
The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is an agency of the Government of Ontario and acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Culture. It is the foremost venue in the country showcasing the Group of Seven and their contemporaries. In addition to touring exhibitions, its permanent collection consists of more than 5,500 artworks, including paintings by the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, First Nations and Inuit artists.
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For further information:
Media Contact
Stephen Weir, Publicist
(905) 893-1121 ext. 2529 Gallery
(416) 489-5868 Home Office
(416) 801-3101 Cell
sweir5492@rogers.com
