| Jack Bush (1909-1977)
Jack Bush was born in Toronto, 1909 and raised in Montreal. After finishing high school, he became an apprentice in the Art department of the Rapid Grip Company in Montreal, where his father was a manager. He moved to Toronto in 1928 where he attended evening classes at the OCA. Bush began his career primarily as a landscape painter influenced by the Group of Seven. In the late 1940s he started experimenting with abstraction. In 1950 he first visited New York’s Museum of Modern Art and that confirmed him in his new direction. Jack Bush started working on large-scale abstract paintings in the early 1950s but did not quite develop his signature style until later in the decade when he became part of a prestigious club of young artists called Painters Eleven. Bush’s mature paintings are unmistakable. They have highly recognizable formats, strokes or bands of intense and varied colour, idiosyncratic drawing, and a spontaneous touch. Jack Bush participated in many important national and international group shows and exhibited solo between 1945 and 1977. He died in 1977 in Toronto at the age of sixty-six.
Exhibitions:
2006 Jack Bush: Important Paintings, Gallery One, Toronto, Ontario
2005 The Shape of Colour - Excursions in Colour Field Art, 1950-Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario
2001 La collection, Musée dart contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec
2000 Œuvres phares et acquisitions récentes, Musée dart contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec
1983 ‘Jack Bush, A Survey: 1959-1976,’ Gallery One Toronto, Ontario
1981-1982 ‘The Heritage of Jack Bush: A Tribute,’ Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
1981 ‘Jack Bush Paintings 1973 to 1976,’ André Emmerich Gallery, NY
1980 ‘L’Amérique aux Indépendants,’ Société des Artistes Indépendants, Grand Palais, Paris
1979 One-man exhibition at the Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
1977 ‘Twentieth Century Masters’ at the Wassington Galleries, Toronto.
1976-1977 Jack Bush: A Retrospective, Traveling Exhibition, Art Gallery of Ontario, Edmonton Art Gallery Toronto, ON and Edmonton, AB
1976-1977 Jack Bush: A Retrospective, Traveling Exhibition, Musee d'Art Contemporain, Nat'l Gallery of Canada Montreal, PQ and Ottawa, ON
1974 Solo Show, Waddington Galleries London, Eng
1973 Jack Bush: "Works on Paper", Edmonton Art Gallery Edmonton, AB
1971 Solo Show, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA
1970 Ten Year Retrospective, Norman McKenzie Art Gallery, University of Regina Regina, SK
1970 Ten Year Retrospective, Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, University of Regina Regina, SK
1969 Solo Show, Waddington Galleries London, Eng
1967 Solo Show, David Mirvish Gallery Toronto, ON
1967 Nine Canadians, ICA Boston, MA
1967 Solo Show, Andre Emmerich Gallery New York, NY
Collections:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, PA
MIT Lis Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Ont. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
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