This book reveals the magnificent landscape paintings of the Group of Seven and their associates and explores how they contributed to Canada's modern cultural identity. The early decades of the 20th century were marked by artistic, economic, and social transformation in Canada and around the world. Starting in Toronto, a group of young modern artists, including Tom Thomson and Lawren S. Harris, and Emily Carr in British Columbia, desired to create a new painting vocabulary for the young nation coming into its own cultural identity. They turned away from city life and explored Canada's landscape, painting sublime vistas, monumental rivers, ancient forests around the great lakes, the mighty Rocky Mountains, and the arctic tundra, determined to break away from European stylistic traditions. Together, their paintings imagined a mythical Canada, expansive and rugged, that added to their country's growing sense of national pride. Featuring paintings, sketches, photographs, film stills, and documentary material, this catalog examines the language of Canadian modernism. It also includes essays and interviews that offer contemporary indigenous perspectives on the impact of industry on nature, issues surrounding national identity, and modern Canadian landscape painting. This generously illustrated book critically reviews Canada's modernism in art history.

Since its first appearance in 1967, Russell Harper's classic study of Canadian painting has been recognized as the outstanding authority on the subject. This edition provides a comprehensive survey, generously illustrated, of three centuries of Canadian painting from its beginnings in the seventeenth century. Through a lively combination of entertaining anecdotes, descriptions of the cultural background, biographical accounts, and critical judgement, the reader comes to know intimately the artists, their paintings, and their environments. Included are 173 reproductions - 45 added since the first addition. They all ow the reader to see representative works from all periods, and provide a visual record of the cultural and social history of Canada.

In the tradition of the distinguished Douglas & McIntyre art program, this lavishly illustrated and superbly printed book is a rich, readable history of abstract painting in Canada. The story begins in the 1920s with the sometimes eccentric but remarkable work, rooted in symbolism and theosophy, of pioneers such as Kathleen Munn, Bertram Brooker and Lawren Harris. Two decades later the Automatistes-Canada's first truly independent avant-garde art movement-burst onto the scene in Montreal. After the Second World War, the urge to abstraction spread across Canada, manifesting itself in significant regional movements. Vancouver painters retained a British flavour, while in Toronto, the Painters Eleven looked south to New York. Montreal's Plasticiens launched their own razor-edged interpretation of the European tradition of geometric abstraction. In the sixties and seventies, the Prairies were influenced by Clement Greenberg's post-painterly abstraction, while Halifax became a hub of conceptual art and concrete painting. The book continues through the eighties and nineties, during which critics largely denounced painting, and concludes in the twenty-first century, with abstract painting alive and well again in the studios of Canada's young artists. A monumental tome containing 200 color reproductions, it mines a rich vein of art history ripe for international discovery.

Bateman journeys across all seven regions of Canada, and his art reflects the intrinsically Canadian beauty of the country. The paintings celebrate the history, diversity, and natural wonder. In the introductory comments for each section, Bateman explains how the land has captivated him, as an artist and as a nature lover, for decades

Few twentieth-century artists were catalysts for the reclamation of a culture, but Iljuwas Bill Reid (1920-1998) was among them. The first book on the artist by an Indigenous scholar details Reid's incredible journey to becoming one of the most significant Northwest Coast artists of our time. Born in British Columbia and denied his mother's Haida heritage in his youth, Iljuwas Bill Reid lived the reality of colonialism yet tenaciously forged a creative practice that celebrated Haida ways of seeing and making. Over his fifty-year career, he created nearly a thousand original works and dozens of texts, and he is remembered as a passionate artist, community activist, mentor, and writer. Reid was often said to embody the Raven, a trickster who transforms the world. He followed in the footsteps of his great-great-uncle, master Haida artist Daxhiigang (Charles Edenshaw), engaging with a culture whose practices were once banned by the Indian Act and producing symbols for a nation. His iconic large-scale works now occupy sites such as the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Reid's legacy is a complex story of power, resilience, and strength. In Iljuwas Bill Reid: Life & Work, acclaimed scholar Gerald McMaster examines how the artist made a critical inquiry into his craft throughout his life, gaining a sense of identity, purpose, and impact.

Emily Carr (1871--1945) is one of Canada's most beloved artists. An independent woman and a Westerner who gained prominence at a time when female painters were not recognized internationally, her life and work reflect a profound commitment to the land she knew and loved. Carr's sensitive evocations reveal an artist grappling with spiritual questions inspired by the Canadian sea, land, and people. Although more than half a century has passed since her death, any artist who engages with the West Coast must contend with her legacy. Her paintings continue to inspire generations of artists. Along with the Group of Seven, Carr became a leading figure in Canadian modern art in the early twentieth century. Emily Carr: Life & Work traces the artist's trajectory from her life in Victoria, where she struggled to receive acceptance, to her status as one of Canada's most influential painters. With insight and intelligence, author Lisa Baldissera explores how although during Carr's life she endured hardship, personal isolation, and rejection, she persevered to create an iconic vision for the nation. This book explores how Carr travelled extensively, learning from European, American, and Indigenous forms and receiving formal training at art academies as well as from private tutors. In doing so, she continued to grow in artistic power as a result of her own intense observation and of her vigorous experimentation with a variety of methods and media, reflecting the fusion of wide-ranging influences. Baldissera reveals why Carr's art remains relevant today and its legacy interests many contemporary West Coast artists.

Cape Dorset-born Annie Pootoogook (1969-2016) explored, celebrated, and depicted her northern community in unprecedented ways. Pootoogook belonged to a family of famed Inuit artists that included her parents Eegyvudluk and Napachie, and her grandmother, the celebrated Pitseolak Ashoona. In 1997, Pootoogook started working at the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative's Kinngait Studios, where she produced drawings in ink and crayon on a monumental scale. In addition to depicting scenes of everyday life in the North--including people watching TV, playing cards, shopping, or cooking dinnerh--Pootoogook depicted such difficult subjects as alcoholism, domestic abuse, food scarcity, and the effects of intergenerational trauma. Pootoogook's compelling drawings resulted in her national and international recognition. Author Nancy G. Campbell reveals how the strength of Pootoogook's work speaks not to what she saw but the way she saw it, and how her distinct images of nude women, spiritual encounters, and domestic scenes led the way for the works of many contemporary Inuit artists.