Bruno Bobak
CPE, CSPWC, ARCA, OC
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SUMMER EVENING
BILL RING'S TULIPS
CAPITAL AT TWILIGHT
POKESHAW BEACH
Bruno Bobak is world famous and he lives just down the street. For over sixty years his art has shown the world a Canadian vision and offered Canada a vision of itself, and for the last 47 of those years he has lived right here in Fredericton. Bruno is a citizen of the world in the deepest sense, but he is also a central citizen of Fredericton , as the Distinguished Citzen award, which last month honoured him and his wife Molly Lamb Bobak, testifies. A flick through the new Goose Lane publication entitled Bruno Bobak: The Full Palette offers the reader and the viewer a tour that explains why Bruno was picked as the youngest Official war artist (in 1943), why his paintings have been reproduced on stamps and given as official gifts to dignitaries, and why he is continually celebrated as one of Canada's most important contemporary artists. We celebrate him as a painter in oil but we must no less glory in his prints. These two media, in variations from realism to Canadian Expressionism or Fauvism, have been the conduit from Bruno to the fortunate viewer. Bruno has also created art in forms as diverse as bronze sculpture, batique textile, furniture and even architecture (the man designed his own house.) The art has been written and talked about by eloquent people for years and so it is only possible to state simply that Bruno Bobak's art is as good as the best art ever made. Make no mistake, Bruno Bobak is a genuine Great Artist – not because he's famous or because his paintings consistently increase in financial value. His art is formed great, that's all. He's had exhibitions all over the world; he's been awarded honourary degrees, and fellowships and the Order of Canada. Bruno Bobak has been very successful. But now, at 84, Bruno has decided that he wants to take a break. This new exhibition will be his last one-man show. This is a significant moment in Canadian art, and it is a significant moment for Fredericton . The art will continue of course, and the legacy will expand, but Bruno will recover some of the freedom of a private citizen and enjoy the cultural capital that he has made in Fredericton. Bruno Bobak is an important Canadian and he lives not in Toronto or Vancouver or London (though he has lived in all of these places). He lives in New Brunswick, as our neighbour. Let us count ourselves fortunate to be able to say that. So enjoy Bruno Bobak as a citizen and an artist, enjoy Bruno Bobak as a Frederictonian. And enjoy his art, before it's all gone.
FIELDS
WINTER CAMPUS (ST. THOMAS)
BARKER'S POINT
Aged 20 and just out of art studies at Central Technical School in Toronto, Bruno Bobak made an impressive debut as a professional artist. Having enlisted in the army, he submitted a watercolour to an army art exhibition, won first prize, and was appointed as an official war artist in 1944. From then on he was included in important exhibitions and galleries in Canada, the United States and abroad with opportunity to travel, explore, and broaden his creative experiences. It was during one such study trip to Europe that news arrived of his appointment as artist-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick in 1960. It was to be only a one-year stay in Fredericton, but it turned out to be a lifetime. From 1962 until his retirement in 1987, Bruno Bobak was director of the UNB Art Centre. In Fredericton, in the 60s, from his studio on the campus of the university, Bruno Bobak produced some of his most vital figurative work - large canvases of life-size figures aggressively yet tenderly depicted in a dripping mix of paints, jarring colors and great sweeping gestures of expressionism. Within the relative isolation of New Brunswick, Bobak found himself in an environment and setting which afforded him the mental space and physical opportunity to do and say what he needed in his art. It culminated in a major touring exhibition, Bruno Bobak's "Humanism", which toured the Atlantic region in 1971. But Bruno Bobak's art was never limited nor confined to a single subject, medium, technique, style or vision. A consummate craftsman, he was equally adept at drawing, watercolors, printmaking, oil painting, mural-making and sculpture. With ingenuity and imagination he also designed and planted vegetable and flower gardens, reinvented uses for discarded industrial materials, designed and decorated his house, and fashioned his own furniture. Such diversification reflected his strong background in design at Central Tech. In the '50s he would head the design department at the Vancouver School of Art. Subjects for art-making also varied: landscapes, figures, portraits, still-life, flowers, vegetables, street scenes, harbours, and buildings. Interestingly, in terms of style, in the past 15 years Bobak has returned to his stark realist style of early years. Textures have become smooth and flattened, colors patterned, the palette heightened in tone, and the structure of compositions more consciously designed and ordered.
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