Step Into the Light with L.L. FitzGerald at WAG
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Winnipeg Art Gallery | Qaumajuq 300 Memorial Blvd, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 1V1
Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, “Doc Snyder’s House,” 1931
oil on canvas, 30” x 34” (collection of the National Gallery of Canada; photo courtesy NGC)
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is now featuring Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, celebrating an influential Winnipeg artist and Group of Seven member who captured the spirit of Manitoba like no other.
The exhibition coincides with the 150th anniversary of Manitoba and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Group of Seven in 2020. Organized by the WAG in partnership with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Into the Light was unveiled with the Gallery’s reopening last month and runs until September 7, 2020.
About the Show:
- Into the Light is the first comprehensive survey of the Manitoba modernist and Group of Seven member in 40 years, the largest to date.
- The exhibition features more than 200 artworks that explore FitzGerald’s early 20th-century prairie scenes and his St. James neighbourhood in Winnipeg. FitzGerald’s deeply contemplative art renders the everyday miraculous, at times suggesting portals to the infinite.
- The show brings together paintings, drawings, and prints from 13 institutional lenders including over 100 pieces from the WAG collection, the largest FitzGerald collection in the world.
- Into the Light is curated by McMichael Canadian Art Collection Chief Curator Sarah Milroy and Executive Director Ian A.C. Dejardin, and Canadian art scholar Michael Parke-Taylor.
- A beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue is available at WAG@TheForks. The publication by Sarah Milroy, Ian A.C. Dejardin and Michael Parke-Taylor features essay contributions by the curators and Dr. Oliver A.I. Botar, Pierre Dorion, Robert Enright, Robert Houle, Andrew Kear, Wanda Koop, and Michael Parke-Taylor with a forward by Dr. Stephen Borys.
About the Artist:
- Rooted in his native city of Winnipeg, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) worked almost exclusively in Manitoba, where he captured the essence of the prairies in his art.
- Beloved for his sensitive and serene depictions of Manitoba and the back streets of Winnipeg, FitzGerald was the only Western member of the Group of Seven. He was the last artist to join the Group in 1932 and the least known.
- FitzGerald’s voice was a quieter one, his legacy including both his stewardship of the Winnipeg School of Art (1929-1947), now the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, and the development of the WAG.
- He had his first show at the Gallery in 1921 and went on to become one of Canada’s best-known early-modernist painters.
- From pointillist abstract works to everyday landscapes, FitzGerald’s influence extends beyond Manitoba and Canada.