Author Description

Product Description Les Graff describes this book as "championing two essential ingredients - Alberta's fierce independence and individuality of the foundation for Alberta's visual arts - while exploring in-depth and detail the tremedously broad base of that foundation......Townshend's book will serve as a major reference for years to come and be pivotal regarding all future writing in the visual arts of Alberta." From the Back Cover This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive coverage of the development of art in Alberta from 1905 to 1970. Written for the Province's 2005 Centennial, this book documents 165 of Alberta's first and second generation of visual artists and their notable individualities. It is a compelling narrative beginning with two lonely modernists, Maxwell Bates and W.L. Stevenson, practising Expressionism in isolated Alberta in contrast with the art of British-trained artists/teachers, A.C. Leighton and H.G. Glyde. It then documents the extraordinary support of the Carnegie Corporation during Alberta's Depression; painting of the Alaska Highway by Peace River artists, Euphemia McNaught and Evy McBryan, during WW II; post-war Modernism featuring Expressionism, abstraction, sense of place, art of fantasy, art of social commentary, metaphor and non-objectivity; Alberta's craft and the democratization of the arts; and public art. The author, Nancy Townshend, carefully presents the full flowering of Alberta's authentic grass-roots culture. This book tells us what Alberta's art was rather than what it wasn't. This book was nominated for the Melba J. Dwyer Award (20060 and was on the Edmonton Journal's best-seller list. About the Author A writer and curator of Alberta art since 1974, Nancy Townshend is the author of "Maxwell Bates: Canada's Premier Expressionist of the Twentieth Century" (2005). She is also the co-curator of the major exhibition, Maxwell Ba