Lawren Harris's 'Lake and Mountains' painted in 1928, one of 30 paintings featured in the show now on at the AGO
Photo Credit: AGO

Lawren Harris exhibit curated by Steve Martin

Lawren Harris, was a founding member of Canada’s ‘Group of Seven‘ artists. For the first time his work is now featured in a solo show at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, thanks in part to American comedian, actor and musician, Steve Martin.

Martin discovered the work of Lawren Harris on visits to Toronto and Vancouver when he worked as a writer, back in the late 1970’s and early ’80’s.

The Idea of the North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris‘ opened this weekend and will close September 18th. Curating it was a labour of love for Steve Martin in collaboration with Cynthia Burlingham, Deputy Director, Curatorial Affairs at L.A.’s Hammer Museum, and Andrew Hunter, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the AGO.

The purpose of the show is to introduce these visions of Canada to our neighbours to the south with stops in Boston, and Los Angeles.

Harris was born in Brantford, Ontario, about a hundred kilometres from Toronto, in 1885. He died in Vancouver in 1970, a revered artist in Canada, with his paintings now fetching record prices.

The exhibit features more than 30 of Harris’ most significant and rare northern landscapes from the 1920s and 1930s, drawn from major public and private collections across Canada including the AGO, the Thomson Collection of Canadian Art at the AGO, the National Gallery of Canada and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

According to the artist himself “Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is the contrary…”

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