Alex Colville

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alex Colville (1945)

David Alexander Colville , PC CC ONS (born August 24, 1920 in Toronto , Ontario , † July 16, 2013 in Wolfville , Nova Scotia ) was a Canadian painter .

biography

Early years and war painter

Colville House, Mount Allison University

David Colville was born in Toronto in 1920, at the age of seven he moved with his family to St. Catharines and in 1929 to Amherst . From 1938 to 1942 he studied at Mount Allison University with Canadian post-impressionists such as Stanley Royle and Sarah Hart. He completed his studies with a Bachelor of Fine Arts .

Colville married Rhoda Wright in 1942, with whom he had been friends since his junior year. Shortly after the wedding, he was drafted into the Canadian Army . He was assigned to the infantry and achieved the rank of lieutenant . Colville painted in Yorkshire and was there when the Royal Canadian Navy landed in southern France. There he was assigned to the Third Canadian Division. After two years in the army, he became a war painter in May 1944 because of his art studies . His unit supported the 82nd Airborne Division in Nijmegen in mid-September 1944 in Operation Market Garden and stayed there until February 1945. Colville visited several places in the Netherlands and Germany, where he was in charge of depicting the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , among other things .

Career

Colville already had initial success during his student days and was able to exhibit his works in 1941 at the Art Association of Montreal (today Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal ) and in 1942 at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts . After the war, Colville returned to New Brunswick and became a faculty member in the Fine Arts Department of Mount Allison University . He taught there from 1946 to 1963. He retired to devote himself fully to painting and printing in his house on York Street, now called Colville House.

At the 1966 Biennale di Venezia Canada was represented by works by Colville, Yves Gaucher and Sorel Etrog .

In 1967 Colville was named Officer of the Order of Canada before being honored with the higher level of Companion in 1982 . He lived in St. Catharines for three years before moving to Nova Scotia. In 1973 Colville and his family moved to Wolfville, his wife's hometown. There they lived in the house they were born in, which their father had built. The Colvilles had three sons, a daughter and eight grandchildren. Colville was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada . In 1981 he was named President of Acadia University . He held the office until 1991.

death

Colville died of heart disease at his Wolfville home on July 16, 2013, aged 92. His wife Rhoda Wright died on December 29, 2012. Three of their four children survived; her second son died on February 22, 2012.

Exhibitions

Alex Colville's star on Canada's Walk of Fame

Colville exhibited his work both in Canada and internationally at the Tate Gallery in London and the Beijing Exhibition Center in Beijing . In 1983 the Art Gallery of Ontario organized an international traveling exhibition.

Colville's works are in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia , the Cape Breton University art exhibition in Sydney , the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Center National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne and at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover .

Works

"Infantry, near Nijmegen, Holland"

"Infantry, near Nijmegen, Holland"

After his training as an infantry officer, Colville made this picture at the end of the Second World War . It is based on various drawings and is called "Infantry". The picture is in the Canadian War Museum. It shows Canadian soldiers pulling down a street. Colville believed that this picture showed his perception of war: heroism and perseverance in nature on the one hand, and constant danger on the other. The picture of the first man is a portrait of his father.

"Horse and Train"

The 1954 picture was inspired by two lines by the poet Roy Campbell :

Against a regiment I oppose a brain
And a dark horse against an armored train.
I oppose a regiment with a brain
And a dark horse against an armored train.

"Horse and Train" is part of the permanent exhibition of the Art Gallery of Hamilton . The image was provided by Dominion Foundries and Steel, Ltd. (Dofasco Inc) donated in 1957. It can be seen on the cover of Bruce Cockburn's Night Vision album . Alex Colville and "Horse and Train" are mentioned in the short story Nowhere to Go by Barry Wood of Nova Scotia (published in Postscripts No. 14, 2008). The picture can also be seen in the film Shining (1980) during the doctor's visit, where it is hanging in the hallway.

"To Prince Edward Island"

The picture from 1965 is one of Colville's most famous works. It shows a woman looking through binoculars in the direction of the artist. Colville describes the work as an exploration of "the searching vision of a woman" as opposed to the "stupid and passive" man. "The woman sees and I think the man does not."

"The Circuit Rider"

His mural in the Tweedie Hall of Mount Allison University is known as "The History of Mount Allison" or "The Circuit Rider".

"Pacific"

The picture “Pacific” from 1967 shows a man leaning against an open door and looking out to sea. On the table in the foreground is an FN Browning HP . A scene from the 1995 film Heat, starring Robert De Niro, was inspired by the image.

"Man on Verandah"

Completed in 1953, the painting sold at auction for $ 1.287 million, a record for a living Canadian artist. It came from the estate of G. Hamilton Southam (1918–2008) and was auctioned off of Canadian post-war and contemporary art Art sold by the Heffel Fine Art Auction House on November 25, 2010. Although originally only 600,000 dollars were expected for the picture, a bidding war between two Canadian telephone bidders and a bidder in the auction house reached the much higher amount.

List of works (selection)

Surname year Current exhibition location
Infantry, near Nijmegen, Holland 1946 Canadian War Museum , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The History of Mount Allison (The Circuit Rider) 1948 Tweedie Hall of Mount Allison University , Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
Nude and dummy 1950 New Brunswick Museum , St. John, New Brunswick, Canada
Man on Verandah 1953 Private collection, Germany
Horse and Train 1954 Art Gallery of Hamilton , Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Family and Rainstorm 1955 Museum of Modern Art , New York City, New York, USA
Couple on Beach 1957 National Gallery of Canada , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Ocean Limited 1962 Art Gallery of Nova Scotia , Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Skater 1964 Museum of Modern Art , New York City, New York, USA
To Prince Edward Island 1965 National Gallery of Canada , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Pacific 1967 Private collection, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dog and Priest 1978 Private collection, Canada
Target Pistol and Man 1980 Private collection, Canada
Cyclist and Crow 1981 Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal , Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Black Cat 1996 Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University , Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
Waterville 2003 Private collection, Canada

Other works

In 1965 Colville was commissioned to design a set of commemorative coins commemorating 100 years of Canada (1867–1967). The set consisted of the following coins: rock dove on the 1-cent coin, rabbit on the 5-cent coin, mackerel on the 10-cent coin, lynx on the 25-cent coin, wolf on the 50-cent coin Coin and duck on the 1 dollar coin.

On March 22, 2002, the Canadian Post issued the "Church and Horse, 1964, Alex Colville" stamp in the Masterpieces of Canadian Art series. It was designed by Pierre-Yves Pelletier after the picture "Church and Horse" (1964) by Alex Colville. The $ 1.25 stamp is 13 × 13.5 and was printed by Ashton-Potter Limited.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Adams: War was the crucible of his life and art: He loved to stay home in Nova Scotia, felt comfortable sticking with a realistic style through long periods when it was unfashionable . In: The Globe and Mail , July 18, 2013, p. 8. 
  2. ↑ a b Alex Colville ( en )
  3. ^ A b War Artists - David Alexander Colville . Library and Archives Canada .
  4. ↑ a b c d Tulips Main Page: Sept 11th .
  5. ↑ Mark Celinscak: Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2015, ISBN 9781442615700 .
  6. ^ Past Canadian Exhibitions . In: National Gallery of Canada at the Venice Biennale . National Gallery of Canada. Archived from the original on October 13, 2013. Retrieved October 12, 2013.
  7. ↑ Canadian painter Alex Colville dies - CBC News .
  8. ↑ The Canadian Press - July 24, 2014 Artist Alex Colville remembered in Wolfville, NS ( November 8, 2016 memento ), accessed April 19, 2016
  9. ^ Search the Collection .
  10. ↑ CBC Television: Life and Times ( March 31, 2009 memento )
  11. ↑ Alex Colville, To Prince Edward Island, 1965 ( en )
  12. ↑ Alex Colville, in a letter to curator Patrick Laurette, July 31, 1980, quoted in: Andrew Hunter: Colville (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2014).
  13. ↑ Tim Groves and Costas Thrasyvoulou: Against the Flow of Time: Michael Mann and Edward Hopper ( Memento April 6, 2015), Screening the Past, 2008.
  14. ↑ Tamsin McMahon: Alex Colville painting auctioned for $ 1,287-million . In: The National Post , November 25, 2010. 
  15. ↑ Virtual Museum: "Art of Atlantic Canada"
  16. ↑ Canada Post stamp

literature

Web links

Commons : Alex Colville  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Colville, Alex
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colville, David Alexander (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Toronto
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 2013
Place of death Wolfville