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Kim Ondaatje: Paintings 1950-1975

Painting of water reaching the cliffs on a shore

Kim Ondaatje: Paintings 1950-1975

July 22–August 16, 2008

Curated by Lora Senechal Carney

University of Toronto Art Centre

This exhibition will constitute an important retrospective of the artist’s remarkable 25-year career as a painter and will provide the public with an opportunity to view this oeuvre in its entirety for the first time.

Kim Ondaatje produced a unique body of work. Committing herself to painting full-time by the early 1960s, Ondaatje later became an award-winning printmaker, directed two art films and three documentaries, and published three books of photography. Early in her career, in the 1960s, Ondaatje helped found and develop CAR/FAC (Canadian Artists Representation/Front des artistes canadiens), with fellow London-based artists Jack Chambers and Tony Urquhart.

Ondaatje’s paintings can be situated in a history of Canadian art after the internationalist nonobjective work of the Automatistes, the Regina Five, and Painters Eleven, a history in which the “local” took on increasingly complex meanings and greater and greater importance while demonstrating full awareness of the larger art world. In the 1970s her work received national and international recognition.

Opening Reception

Thursday July 24, 2008, 6-8pm
University of Toronto Art Centre

Curator’s Tour with Lora Senechal Carney

Thursday August 7, 2008, 6-7pm
University of Toronto Art Centre

Our Supporters

We gratefully acknowledge the project support of Manulife Financial.

Title Image: Kim Ondaatje, Hearn Plant, Toronto Harbour, 1974. Acrylic, masking tape and mixed media on canvas. 163 x 214 cm. Collection of Art Gallery of Ontario, Gift of David L. McQueen, Uxbridge, Ontario, 2005.

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