Denyse Thomasos: just beyond

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Denyse Thomasos, “ Arc,” 2009

acrylic on canvas (Art Gallery of Ontario, Purchase, with funds from the Women’s Art Initiative, 2022, © The Estate of Denyse Thomasos and Olga Korper Gallery) (Photo: Michael Cullen)

One of the finest painters to emerge in the 1990s, the late Trinidadian-Canadian artist Denyse Thomasos (1964–2012) left an indelible, yet frequently overlooked, mark on contemporary painting.

A career retrospective, Denyse Thomasos: just beyond, brings together more than 70 paintings and works on paper, many rarely seen, to show how she challenged the limits of abstraction, infusing personal and political content onto her canvases through the innovative use of formalist techniques. Through pattern, scale and repetition, Thomasos conveys the vastness of events such as the transatlantic slave trade without exploiting the images of those who were most affected.