Breaking Boundaries: Canadian Women Impressionists Abroad and at Home. By Katerina Atanassova
Sunday Lecture Series 2022 (Virtual Event)
March 13, 2-4pm (PDT)
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Canada witnessed a new wave of artists going abroad, amongst those — the first Canadian Women Impressionists. This lecture will follow in the footsteps of some incredible women artists, who, settling in the French capital and absorbing the air of the juste milieu, trained, and matured as leading Impressionist painters upon their return home. Their choices of subject matter were emblematic of their personal touch, revealing a streak of spontaneity, that moved their art away from former structural underpinnings and demonstrated their zest for capturing everyday experiences. We will discuss their modernist approach, animated through their immediate engagement with their environments.
General $30 | Members and Students $25
Get the series of 4 lectures: $90 General Admission; $75 Gallery Members and Students (buy series tickets by March 4).
Images (L-R): Helen McNicoll, In the Tent,1914, oil on canvas, 80 × 59.5 cm, Private collection, Toronto photo: Thomas Moore*, with the permission of Katerina Atanassova, curator of the exhibit Canada and Impressionism (National Gallery of Canada). National Gallery of Canada. Sophie Pemberton, Little Boy Blue, 1897, (detail), 67X50.5cm. Gift of the artist. AGGV. 1952.015.001. Collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
Katerina Atanassova, who previously headed the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Toronto) as Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions, is currently Senior Curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) where she has led the reinstallation of the new Indigenous and Canadian Galleries. Amongst her most recent exhibitions are the internationally acclaimed Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons, which concluded its European tour in 2019–2020 and will be opening at the National Gallery in January 2022. Her other curated exhibitions include Morrice: The A.K. Prakash Collection in Trust to the Nation, which toured across Canada from 2018 to 2020, Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (2011) and The Sacred Image of the Icon: A World of Belief (2008). A graduate of the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies (University of Toronto), she is working on a Ph.D. at York University regarding the emergence of urban culture in Canada.
