Kathleen Munn, Untitled (female nude in forest setting), around 1923, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 45 cm, Collection of Bernard and Sylvia Ostry, promised gift to the Art Gallery of Ontario, © 2011 Kathleen Munn Estate
June 4 – August 28, 2011
Free tour: July 17, 2pm by curator Georgiana Uhlyarik and artist David Urban
ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO
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“I am very hopeful that my art will be rediscovered again.” – Kathleen Munn, 1974
The Passion of Kathleen Munn will features nearly 40 works by Munn, including her highly regarded Passion Series drawings, as well as paintings and prints. In addition, the exhibition will be supported by archival material from the AGO’s collection, including sketches, notebooks, diagrams, collages and a custom-made light box.
Born in 1887 in Toronto, Kathleen Munn was one of the first Canadian artists to embrace abstraction. Little known yet much admired by fellow artists, Munn studied in New York, and during the 1920s travelled to Europe and exhibited with the Group of Seven. Around 1939, she stopped making art due to family obligations and an unresponsive art public in Toronto. She spent the rest of her life here in relative obscurity, only to be rediscovered a decade after her death in 1974.
Curated by , assistant curator, Canadian art at the AGO, The Passion of Kathleen Munnfocuses on the artist’s work and life and is augmented by important additional loans from private collections as well as archival material. Selected works from the exhibition Kathleen Munn and Lowrie Warrener: The Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space, conceived and organized by Cassandra Getty, form the foundation of the AGO installation. That exhibition has traveled across Canada since 2008, when it first opened at the Art Gallery of Windsor (AGW).
Munn’s landmark works are widely considered to be a group of ten large ink and graphite drawings inspired by scenes from the Passion and Resurrection of Christ that together form The Passion Series. She laboured for a decade, from 1928 to 1939, to produce these intricate final drawings that represent the culmination of Munn’s artistic vision and ambition. A gallery space in the exhibition is devoted exclusively to this series.
“Kathleen Munn is extraordinary in many ways,” explains Uhlyarik. “She created art for art’s sake, was highly meticulous and methodical, and pursued a style and way of thinking about art that was yet to be acknowledged in Canada. Art for her was not a goal to be arrived at, but a way of life.”
A 177-page catalogue titled The Logic of Nature, The Romance of Space: Elements of Canadian Modernist Painting accompanies the exhibition and is published by the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. The publication includes 80 full-colour illustrations and essays by Uhlyarik and Getty, among others. It is available at shopAGO for $50.
This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Windsor and supported by the Museum Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The AGO installation is generously supported by Gretchen and Donald Ross.