Major donation of art to Norfolk County – Regina Leader-Post

Good things continue to happen to Norfolk’s heritage and culture division.

Earlier this year, Norfolk County was pleased to learn that the late Virginia “Gypsy” Moore, of Simcoe, left $52,570 for the care and upkeep of the Norfolk Archives/Eva Brook Donly Museum in Simcoe.

Last week, the Norfolk Arts Centre announced that six patrons from the London area had donated 29 works of art worth more than $100,000 to the gallery’s permanent collection.

The works date from the mid-20^th century. They represent some of the earliest expressions of abstract art produced in Canada. A number of the pieces were rendered by members of Painters 11, the collective credited with introducing abstract painting to the Canadian arts scene.

“It’s a really exciting donation,” NAC curator Roberta Grosland said this week.

“You can see that period when they started experimenting with abstract art and then what came later.”

Organizer of the donation is Jens Thielsen, owner and curator of Thielsen Gallery in London.

Before selecting the artwork, Thielsen examined the 900-plus pieces in NAC’s permanent collection, which includes works by some of Canada’s most famous painters.

Thielsen inspected the local collection to determine how Painters 11 was represented. He and other donors then selected pieces that illustrate the development and evolving styles of the artists in question. Thielsen and his colleagues are devoted to the idea that important art should be widely enjoyed and not confined to urban areas where market conditions are more favourable to artists.

“In the early-1950s, the Toronto art scene was given a significant nudge forward with the advent of a group of painters that would come to be known as the Painters 11,” Janet Hepburn, curator of the former gallery23 in Port Dover, said in a background piece on member Walter Yarwood, who lived out his sunset years in Port Rowan.

“These nine men and two women banded together to elicit a greater impact, to show Toronto art lovers the importance that abstract expressionism was having on an international level, and to grow interest and legitimacy in the form.

“They revolutionized and enlivened contemporary art in Toronto and across Canada. Their collective goal was to turn Canadian landscape art on its head.”

Members of Painters 11 were inspired, in part, by the blossoming of abstract expressionism in the United States. Leading the way there were Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).

Prominent among the pieces donated to Norfolk is a work by Jack Bush (1909-1977) titled Church Doorway, St. Thomas, Toronto 1948.

Bush went on to enjoy commercial success in New York City. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1976.

Also represented are painters Robert Curnoe, Carl Beam, Tony Urquard, Alex Cameron, Clark McDougall, Jeff Willmore, Gerald Pedros and Ron Milton. The works will be displayed at the Norfolk Arts Centre during an upcoming series of rotating exhibitions.

MSonnenberg@postmedia.com