Ronald Bloore - One

Ronald Bloore: prominent painter and art historian; Director of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery from 1958 to 1966; member of the Regina Five formed in 1961; Professor in variously the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University from 1966 to 1985; Order of Canada, 1993.

As from 1958 Bloore challenged himself by investigating historically identified yet personalized symbols in primarily whites - whites and blacks being the salient colours of the modernist investigation of pure form. Malevich and Borduas are examples of artists who preceded Bloore in this investigation. (Bloore's colour focus is unquestionably whites - just once black appearing in one of his paintings, he says.) He derives his symbols (grids, stars, arches, circles, broken lines…) mainly from Byzantine, Assyrian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese art. There is allusion to, therefore, and often direct evocation of, immemorial, multi-layered meaning. Contributing also to the transcendence of his artwork is formal content: proportion, scale, colour, texture, pattern, these displayed in sometimes asymmetrical yet always coherent design. A complement is achieved to some extent by the power and substance which are conveyed by the oil-on-board medium.

Bloore has also created many ink works. They feature a high level of spontaneity and intuition. In contrast, the paintings are usually pre-planned.

In Bloore's activity as professor, he has been very instrumental in the national development of young art historians.

It is an honour for Winchester Galleries to present this exhibition of important artwork by Ronald Bloore, a seminal figure in Canadian art.