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WORK 17.5 X 13.5 - FRAME 24.25 X 20.25 - SIGNED SERIGRAPH 18/35
Gordon Appelbe Smith, CM, OBC, painter, printmaker, teacher, philanthropist (born 18 June 1919 in East Brighton, England; died 18 January 2020 in West Vancouver, BC). Gordon Smith was a key figure in Vancouver’s art scene during the latter half of the 20th century. He was best known for his monumental, modernist abstractions of the West Coast landscape, and for his long and influential career as a teacher and philanthropist. He was made a Member of the Order of Canada for making “a major contribution to the development of the fine arts in Canada.” He also received the Order of British Columbia, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, and the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
Painting Career
Smith was mentored by Group of Seven member Lawren Harris and had his first solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1944. In 1951, he studied under Elmer Bischoff at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Having moved in his work to a modernist approach, Smith first attracted national attention for his award-winning Structure with Red Sun at the First Biennial of Canadian Painting at the National Gallery in 1955. The work is a form of romantic lyric abstraction that balances the pervasive influence of the West Coast landscape with a gestural, non-objective manner of painting. This gestural quality became particularly pronounced in his work after the mid-1980s.
Throughout his career, Smith had more than 25 solo exhibitions at Vancouver’s Equinox Gallery and participated in biennials in Brazil and Canada. He and architect Arthur Erickson, who designed Smith’s first and second homes, collaborated on the design of the Canadian Pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. Smith was also commissioned to provide major works to Canada House in London, England; the Chan Centre For the Performing Arts in Vancouver; Simon Fraser University in Burnaby; the West Vancouver Community Centre; and the Surrey Public Library. In 1997, the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted a 55-year retrospective of his work, which was accompanied by a major book. Smith and his work were also the subject of David James’s 2008 documentary, Gordon Smith: The Reflective Canvas.
Smith’s last exhibition of new paintings was in 2018. His work is held in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. He died in January 2020 at the age of 100.
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