Abstract Painting in Canada

Book excerpt: After the overwhelming success of the original, this lavishly illustrated and superbly printed art book is now available in trade paper. From the sometimes eccentric but remarkable work, rooted in symbolism and theosophy, of pioneers such as Kathleen Munn, Bertram Brooker and Lawren Harris, to the Automatistes in Montreal, to the conceptual art movement in Halifax, the urge to abstraction in art is spread wide across Canada. Abstract Painting in Canada covers the movement throughout the twentieth century, including highlights from 1940s Montreal and the Clement Greenberg-influenced Prairies in the sixties and seventies. 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 colour reproductions, it mines a rich vein of art history ripe for international discovery.