Emily Carr

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Emily Carr
Totem Mother, 1928

Emily Carr (born December 13, 1871 in Victoria , British Columbia , † March 2, 1945 in Victoria) was a Canadian painter and writer who was heavily influenced by the Indian cultures of Western Canada .

Life

Carr was born in Victoria, the capital of the Canadian province of British Columbia, the penultimate of nine children. After the death of her parents, Richard and Emily, née Saunders, she went to San Francisco in 1890 and studied art. Three years later she returned to her birthplace and set up a gallery in the barn of her parents' house. There she taught children.

Odds and Ends

In 1899 she went to Great Britain to continue her studies at the Westminster School of Art in London . However, since she could not stand the London climate, she moved to Cornwall , Bushey , Hertfordshire and in the meantime back to San Francisco in search of a more healthy climate for her . In 1905 she returned to British Columbia and moved into the "wilderness" to live with the indigenous people . She was influenced by their cultures and documented the life of the indigenous people of Alaska and British Columbia in her pictures. She began to draw the First Nations totem poles that still existed . As early as 1899 she was deeply impressed by a visit to the mission school near Ucluelet . In 1902, after a visit to Skagway , she began painting totem poles, keeping a keen eye for the differences between the Kwakwaka'wakw in the north and the Nuu-chah-nulth in the west of Vancouver Island , the Haida on the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Tsimshian , Tlingit and other language and cultural groups developed on the mainland and the offshore islands.

After several years in Vancouver , she was forced to return to Victoria for economic reasons. But she tried to develop her style further and therefore traveled to Paris in 1910 , where she, among other things. studied at the Académie Colarossi . She came into contact with works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso . Back in Canada, she continued to paint Indian motifs. But now she mixed elements of impressionism with her previous style.

In 1927 she came into contact with the so-called Group of Seven through the invitation of Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery of Canada . Emily Carr participated in the National Gallery exhibition "Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern". In Ontario she was promoted by Lawren Harris and remained closely associated with the group, even if it was never formally accepted. A few years later she was known in the group as the “mother of modern art”.

Equally important to Emily Carr was the recognition of the Nuu-chah-nulth on the west coast of Vancouver Island. According to her statement, they had given her the nickname "Klee Wyck", "the one who laughs", and a book published in 1941 about their experiences there was accordingly entitled Klee Wyck . At a time when the Canadian Indians were not even eligible to vote and their rituals were strictly prohibited, this was a bold publication.

At that time, Carr had long since made her breakthrough as an artist . In 1937 the Art Gallery of Ontario held an exhibition in her honor, and in 1938 she had an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery .

But in her homeland, the artist mostly encountered incomprehension, especially in Victoria. So she withdrew for about a decade, to which health problems also contributed.

Carr's gravestone in Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria
inscription

She was buried in Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, her gravestone bears the inscription "Artist and Author / Lover of Nature".

Aftermath

Today, Emily Carr's work is widely recognized in Canada and has been public property since 1996. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria at 1040 Moss Street, founded in 1951, exhibits numerous works by Emily Carr.

Just a few years after it was published in 1941, Carr's collection of stories, Klee Wyck, was used in abridged form in Canada as school reading material.

In Vancouver, the Vancouver School of Art , which dates back to 1925, was renamed the Emily Carr College of Art in 1978 . This college of art was expanded to include design and was called the Emily Carr College of Art and Design from 1981 , the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design from 1995 , and finally the Emily Carr University of Art and Design from 2008 .

Literary works

  • Klee Wyck , Tales 1941. Governor General's Awards , Non-fiction, 1941
    • Single story , translation by Birgit Herrmann: Kitwancool, in Women in Canada. Stories and poems. dtv, 1993, pp. 43-55
    • Single story, translation by Silvia Morawetz : Sophie, mother of the graves, in good wandering, my brother. A Canadian anthology. St. Benno Verlag , Leipzig 1986, pp. 13-22
    • K lee Wyck - The one who laughs . Translation by Marion Hertle, Verlag Das cultural memory, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-946990-37-6 .
  • The Book of Small . 1942
  • The House of All Sorts . 1944
  • Growing pains . 1946
  • Pause . 1953
  • The Heart of a Peacock . 1953
  • Hundreds and Thousands . 1966

literature

Web links

Commons : Paintings by Emily Carr  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Emily's Siblings , archive.org, May 26, 2013.
  2. ↑ Her mother died in 1886, her father followed her in 1888.
  3. ↑ a b Katharina Granzin: The modernist who comes in a canoe. The Canadian artist Emily Carr (1871–1945) not only painted many totem poles, but also wrote literary reports, which have become famous, about her travels in areas of the First Nations. In: taz from 9./10. January 2021, p. 14.
  4. ↑ Emily Carr and her Contemporaries (exhibition since November 2008)
  5. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Mosquito clouds, totem poles. Retrieved October 10, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Carr, Emily
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian painter
BIRTH DATE December 13, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Victoria , Canada
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1945
PLACE OF DEATH Victoria, Canada