Jock Macdonald was a pioneer of postwar abstraction in Canada. This retrospective publication of the Scottish-born and Canada-based artist’s work offers a lively presentation of a career that spanned the country and greatly influenced twentieth century Canadian art.
Featuring his iconic canvases as well as never-before-seen colour reproductions of the artist’s work, this lavishly illustrated volume traces the dramatic transformations that occurred throughout Macdonald’s artistic development—from his early painting career in Vancouver to his move toward abstraction in the thirties, his extraordinary automatics of the forties and his later paintings produced as part of the Toronto-based collective of modernist artists, Painters Eleven.
Leading experts in the field of Canadian art history illuminate the life and work of this influential artist and further insight is provided by a fascinating collection of his correspondence with British surrealists and close friends Dr. Grace W. Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff, as well as a complete transcription of his Nootka Diary, kept while living for a year in the trying conditions of Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island—both of which are published here for the first time.
Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form accompanies a full career retrospective of Macdonald’s work organized by and presented at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Edited Michelle Jacques, Linda Jansma, Ian M. Thom
Essays by Anna Hudson, Michelle Jacques, Linda Jansma, Ian M. Thom
256 pages
11 x 9.5 inches
118 colour and 32 black and white illustrations
ISBN 9781908966810
Hardcover
Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog Publishing
2014