Bertram Brooker : when we awake! / curated by Micahel Parke-Taylor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooker, Bertram, 1888-1955, artist.

Contributor:

Parke-Taylor, Michael, curator.

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Brooker, Bertram, 1888-1955--Exhibitions.

Brooker, Bertram.

Painting, Abstract--Canada--Exhibitions.

Painting, Abstract.

Painters--Canada--Biography.

Painters.

Artists--Canada--Biography.

Artists.

Genre:

exhibition catalogs.

Exhibition catalogs.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

318 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Other Title:

When we awake! : Bertram Brooker

Place of Publication:

Vancouver, BC Canada : Figure 1 Publishing, [2024]

Summary:

"Bertram Brooker (1888-1955), an associate of the Group of Seven, was a multidisciplinary artist who was deeply engaged with the visual, literary and performing arts in Canada during the dynamic interwar period. This was a time of dramatic change in Canadian cultural life, and Brooker was one of the artistic community's most gifted first responders. In 1927 he burst onto the Toronto art scene at the Arts and Letters Club with his painting exhibition 'World and Spirit,' considered to be the first show of abstract paintings in Canada. An advertising executive by day, he was inspired by music and mystical experience throughout his creative career. Brooker combined elements of abstraction and figuration in his work as a painter, illustrator and graphic designer -- reflecting myriad strains of contemporary thought in his efforts as a novelist, poet, short-story and essay writer, screenwriter, playwright, actor, musician, and art critic. This first comprehensive look at a leading figure in Canadian modernism places Brooker's career as a visual artist in the context of his wider creativity at last"--Back cover.

Contents:

Director's foreword / Sarah Milroy

"I will destroy all limits" : the artist as a young man

Into the mystic: cosmic consciousness and the fourth dimension

The world and spirit paintings

"Unity of being" : Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald

Art and literature : Brooker as reader, writer, and illustrator

A leading voice : Brooker as art and culture critic, 1928-30

Between abstraction and representation : the 1930s

The art of painting verbs : the 1940s and 1950s

"The joy of ownership" : Brooker's art collection.

Notes:

Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Bertram Brooker: When We Awake!, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario, February 10 - June 2, 2024.

Includes bibliographic references (pages 291-292) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9781773272436

1773272438

OCLC:

1390916736