Marion Wagschal at Canada Gallery, London
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Marion Wagschal, Song for a Dead Coyote, Acrylic on canvas, 2015. Courtesy Canada Gallery/Battat Contemporary |
Marion Wagschal
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Info
5 Feb -15 April 2016
Opening hours:
Monday- Sunday 11am-5:45pm
Contact
GalleryCanadaGalerie@international.gc.ca
+44 207 004 6000
Address
http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/united_kingdom-royaume_uni/events-evenements/gallery_marion-wagschal_galerie.aspx?lang=eng
Canada Gallery, Canada House
Pall Mall Entrance, Trafalgar Square,
SW1 5BJ, London
UK
The Canada Gallery presents the first UK exhibition by Marion Wagschal
5 February – 15 April 2016
London, United Kingdom – Following her successful retrospective show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal last year, the Canada Gallery is delighted to present Canadian artist Marion Wagschal's first ever exhibition in the UK.
Marion Wagschal is an exhibition of paintings created between 1980 and 2015. Reflecting the painter's affinity for psychological portraits, the selected works are telling of her preferred subject: the feminine figure as a repository of stories both personal and universal.
Wagschal has a pronounced inclination towards empathetic figuration, and an affinity with the work of James Ensor and Egon Schiele.
Throughout her remarkable career, she has refined a kind of realism that offers a new perspective on mythologies and allegories. Her work draws from diverse sources, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era to Romantic painters of the nineteenth century. Her work often takes the form of feminist commentary, and questions her own place as a painter in a predominantly masculine art history.
Drawing anchors her work; her line is unremitting and confident. Like Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Wagschal shares a love of the raw, imperfect, and sometimes grotesque body.
Wagschal's work in this exhibition celebrates an unadulterated beauty, inspired by the depiction of the female form in historical painting. The works illustrate a deep connection to life, old age, fragility, and fate that is not sad but powerful because it is wholly acknowledged.
The exhibition is curated by Marie-Eve Beaupré, Curator of Québécois and Canadian Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Daisy Desrosiers, Director of Battat Contemporary. This project is made in collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Marion Wagschal's gallery, Battat Contemporary.
Notes to editors:
About the Artist
Marion Wagschal lives and works in Montreal, Canada.
Born in 1943 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Marion Wagschal immigrated to Canada in 1951 and completed her studies at Concordia University in Montreal, where she later taught for more than thirty years. As a painter, she adopted the portrait at a time when art history gave precedence to abstraction over figuration.
Marion Wagschal's work is in public and private collections in Canada and abroad.
About the Canada Gallery
The Canada Gallery is located in Canada House, our country's diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom. The gallery enjoys pride of place just steps from the entrance to the National Gallery and serves as a window into the world of contemporary Canadian art.
Recent exhibitions have featured the work of Canadian artists Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Edward Burtynsky and Mark Lewis.
The Canada Gallery's ongoing programme is generously supported by the Dahdaleh Foundation, chaired by Victor Phillip Dahdaleh.
Canada Gallery, Pall Mall entrance, Canada House, Trafalgar Square, SW1 5BJ
Opening hours: Monday- Sunday 11am-5:45pm
For further information, images or interview requests, please contact Joanne Shurvell – joshurvell@gmail.com
