Lawren Harris: Canadian Visionary

Lawren Harris: CanadIan Visionary is a career survey of Group of Seven founding member Lawren Stewart Harris, who played a major role in the history of painting in Canada. Presenting an extensive selection of work from the Gallery’s permanent collection as well as select loans from local and national collections, the exhibition traces Harris’ artistic evolution from the early years of the twentieth century to the mid-1960s and illustrates his move from representational art to abstraction.
 
Among many groundbreaking works in the exhibition is Tamarack Swamp, Algoma (1920), one of the most important landscape paintings in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Personally donated to the Gallery by Harris’ daughter Margaret H. Knox, this painting exemplifies how Harris turned a subject that was considered unattractive into a beautiful work of art. One of Harris’ sketchbooks is also on view for the first time, reflecting on his transition to a non-representational expression of the spiritual.
 
In 1920, Harris joined six colleagues to form the Group of Seven, which remains one of the most influential art movements in Canadian history and which redefined not only the perception of this country’s landscape but also what was appropriate subject matter for its painters. After the dissolution of the Group in 1933, Harris moved toward abstraction and in 1940 he relocated to Vancouver, where he remained until his death in 1970. During these later years he became a major figure in the community and an important leader in the life of the Vancouver Art Gallery, in particular encouraging the development of its Emily Carr Trust collection.