Jack Bush
was born in Toronto in 1909 and died there in
1977. He studied in Montreal and in Toronto,
at the Ontario College of Art, before becoming
a commercial artist.
While the artist’s style is unique, his use
of hard-edged abstraction and brilliant colourization, evident
in this acrylic polymer on canvas, reflects the influence of Picasso,
Matisse, Borduas and of the American art critic Clement Greenberg.
Bush was a member of Painters Eleven,
the Ontario Society of Artists (Vice-Pres., 1943),
the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Canadian
Group of Painters and the Art Director’s
Club of Toronto. He was one of two Canadian Painters
represented in the Biennial at Sao Paulo, Brazil
in 1967. |
Click
to see a larger image (313K)
Portrait of Jack Bush (detail)
Government of Ontario Art Collection
Archives of Ontario |
Click
to see a larger image (348K)
Jack Bush at work in his studio (detail)
Government of Ontario Art Collection
Archives of Ontario |
Bush once explained, “I’m
inclined to think that we owe it to the public to give them
some kind of lead. The difficulty is, in abstract art, the almost
impossible task of convincing viewers that all they have to
do is look with an open mind and let the artwork work on them.
They may like or dislike, but they
can’t help responding one way or the other... My work
is solely about colour and colour juxtaposition.”
|
Untitled, 1967
Jack Bush, O.S.A., A.R.C.A., C.S.P.W.C. (1909-1977)
acrylic polymer on canvas
Government of Ontario Art Collection, 619775
|
