Important Late Works

2260 Oak Bay Avenue

March 6 – March 31, 2010

 Preview
Tuesday March 9 – Saturday March 13,  10 am – 5:30 pm
(work subject to prior sale)

Opening Reception
Sunday, March 14, 2010   1 pm – 5 pm
Elizabeth Ely, harpist;   Karel Roessingh, pianist

 

The sudden death of Jean McEwen in January 1999 marked the end of a long and fruitful career dedicated to painting divested of all superfluous connotations.   As one of the most significant figures of abstract art in Canada, he was able to sustain a relentless effort to renew himself.   The works of the last six years bear witness to his capacity to refine his statements and to deepen his insightful relationship to colour.  To dedicate one’s career to abstract art is quite a challenge.  It involves renouncing mere fashion.  As Ellsworth Kelly once stated about Rothko “(…) all good painting is better with time.”  McEwen’s mature work seems to glow, not only with colour, but with the emotional experience of painting itself.  The “act” of painting is the true subject of these canvases.  The excitement is palpable.  After a heart attack in early 1992, his relationship to painting was threatened.  He had to start all over and came up with very strong “high pitched” shades of colour, reminiscent of the late Gauguin canvases executed in Tahiti during the 1890s.  One in particular, dated 1896, is entitled “Poèmes barbares” and may well be the origin of the very last series executed by McEwen, in which he resolutely transgresses the formal categories of American modernism.  The paint is thicker, the colour stronger, more variegated.

Constance Naubert-Riser
Honorary Professor of Art History
Université de Montréal