Current Exhibition

A Tribute to Norman Bethune: the mural and political cartoons of Avrom Yanovsky

June 3 - September 6, 2010

Avrom Yanovsky, Bethune Mural, acrylic on Masonite, 1964, Yanovsky Family, Toronto.

June 3 – September 6, 2010

Curated by Dr. Anna Hudson

Yanovsky was born in Krivoirog, Ukraine in 1911 and came to Canada with his mother, grandparents, and brother in 1913. They settled first in Winnipeg, where he studied with LeMoine FitzGerald at the Winnipeg School of Art. In 1930 he moved to Toronto and enrolled at the Ontario College of Art to study under Yvonne McKague Housser, John Alfsen, and Rowley Murphy. In 1931 he helped to form the Progressive Arts Club and, in the late 1930s, an artists’ union in Canada. In 1938, he won a scholarship to the American Artists’ School in New York. During the war he worked with John Grierson at the National Film Board of Canada. In 1945-46 he was an instructor of Saturday Morning Classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto. By the late 1940s, he was publishing his cartoons and painting murals. From 1963 through 1970 he was involved in the administration of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art. He died in Toronto in 1979.

This exhibition features Avrom Yanovsky’s mural tribute to Dr. Norman Bethune, who remains best known as a hero in the People’s Republic of China. He is remembered in Canada as a surgeon and inventor who developed a mobile blood-transfusion service, a political activist and an early proponent of a universal health care system. The mural (19 x 7 feet/5.8 X 2.1 metres) was painted for the Communist Party of Canada and covered an entire wall at the Norman Bethune-Tim Buck Educational Centre, 24 Cecil St., Toronto. The mural, completed in 1963-65, has never been exhibited since being removed from its original location.

Also included are over sixty politcal cartoons by Avrom (as he was known professionally) published between 1950 and 1972. The ink drawings, with their collaged and corrected compositions, are the original cartoons published in newspapers nationally, most commonly in the Worker and The Canadian Tribune, and internationally through World News Services. All are animated by a cast of easily recognizable characters: the money bag, the banker, the capitalist, and the politician – with his sidekick, the police or military. Yanovsky saved the leading role for the worker: an idealized representation of labour who endured the endless greed and buffoonery of capital and political power.

 

Cultural Floe: Modern and Inuit Traditions

June 3 - September 6, 2010

 

Shuvinai Ashoona, School Bus, ink pencil crayon on paper, 2006/2007.

June 3 – September 6, 2010

Curated by: Dr. Anna Hudson

This exhibition will juxtapose sculpture and drawing produced at the beginning and (arguably) end of the ethnically defined field of Inuit modern art. During the 1950s an international market developed for carving produced in the regions now known as Nunavut and Nunavik. Sixty years later, following significant attainments in Aboriginal self-governance, current Inuit art now flows into an expansive international contemporary art practice. In this new context, individual artists are celebrated as witnesses to a new global reality. Inuit traditional knowledge privileges the expression of personal experience over received information. The subjective views of life captured in these sculptures and drawings advance the continuity of an inuit way of being in the world and offer a template of cultural influence on contemporary culture. Among the artists featured are: Shuvinai Ashoona, Tim Pitsiulak, William Noah, and Idris Moss-Davies.

Varley: Selections from the Permanent Collection

June 3 - September 6, 2010

 

June 3 – September 6, 2010

A selection of drawings and paintings from the Gallery’s permanent collection form this installation featuring works from the last two decades of Varley’s life and celebrate his connection with Unionville.  Research points out that in the early 1950s Varley’s personal life stabilized after he met Kathleen and Donald McKay and was invited into their home. While living with them, first in Toronto and then in Unionville, Kathy took him on several painting excursions in Ontario and also to British Columbia, to Creston and the Kootenays in the interior. Varley’s landscapes from this period continue to display his keen observation of the immediate surroundings and his attention to detail. His palette changed though and he began using more war, earthly colours, abandoning his favourite use of green and purple. Kathy became a true inspiration for Varley and he painted numerous drawings and paintings of her over the years.