Guido Molinari

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Guido Molinari
Born(1933-10-12)October 12, 1933
Montreal, PQ
DiedFebruary 21, 2004(2004-02-21) (aged 70)
Montreal, PQ
EducationÉcole des beaux-arts de Montréal (1948-1950); the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1951), studying with Marian Scott and Gordon Webber
SpouseFernande Saint-Martin (m. 1958)

Guido Molinari OC RCA L.L. D. (October 12, 1933 – February 21, 2004) was a Canadian artist, known internationally for his serial abstract paintings and their dynamic interplay of colours and focus on modular shapes. His Stripe series is especially celebrated. Molinari himself described their effect - and the effect of all his paintings - as creating a new kind of fictional space "because it happens in the mind and yet also involves the totality of perception".[1]

Biography[edit]

Molinari was born in Montreal, Quebec of Italian heritage - his parents were from Cune (Borgo a Mozzano, Tuscany) and Naples, Campania. He began painting at age 13. He enrolled at the School of the Art Association of Montreal, studying with Marian Dale Scott and Gordon Webber (1948-1951). A year later he contracted tuberculosis. While he was convalescing, he studied existentialism, reading authors such as Sartre, Camus, Piaget and Nietzsche.[2] He did not complete his formal training in art but found his own path.[3]

Early in his career, Molinari read a 1955 article about Jackson Pollock dripping paint onto canvas and went to New York to paint abstractly.[4] He then returned to Montreal where he held his first solo exhibition at L'Échourie,[5] founded the Galerie L'Actuelle with Fernande Saint-Martin, his future wife (also in 1955)[6] and helped create the Non-Figurative Artists Association in 1960.[3] Between 1963 and 1969, he created hard edge paintings consisting of vertical bands of equal width placed on a flat picture plane called the Stripe series. The National Gallery of Canada,[7] acquired a canvas from the series and one of the series was included in the important group exhibition The Responsive Eye (1965) held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, along with works by artists such as Frank Stella.[8] Works of the Stripe series by Molinari and work by Ulysse Comtois represented Canada at the 1968 Venice Biennale[9] for which Molinari won the major prize of the David E. Bright Foundation.[5] From 1969 to 1970, he made "checkerboard" paintings (he titled them "Structures') dividing the verticals by the horizontal[10] and in 1971, he began to bisect each stripe, creating a new format of triangles.[11] In the late 1970s, he created the Quantificateur series[12] and, in the years before his death, the Checkerboard paintings (he called them the Continuum series).[13]

From 1953, he exhibited his work, primarily in America and Europe, including in shows at the National Gallery of Canada (retrospective, 1976), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (retrospective, 1995),[5] in the Guggenheim Museum (Guggenheim International Award 1964), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (The Responsive Eye, 1965).

Molinari taught for 27 years at Sir George Williams University and Concordia University, retiring in 1997.[3] In 2004, Concordia recognized him with a posthumous honorary doctorate.[3]

An avid art collector, his extensive private collection included the work of Mondrian and the manuscript pages of Mondrian`s original defition of Neo-Plasticism (1926),[14] Matisse, John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Quebec artists Denis Juneau, John Lyman, and Ozias Leduc. His obituary in the National Post quoted the then director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Matthew Teitelbaum, as saying he owned Barnett Newman, Richard Serra, Francis Bacon, Piet Mondrian and Ellsworth Kelly.[15]

Guido Molinari died in of 2004 pneumonia after having bone cancer which migrated from his lungs.[15]

Honours and awards[edit]

Molinari won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967,[16] the David Bright Prize at the Venice Bienniale (1968), was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1971, received the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (1973)[17] and won the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas in 1980.[3]

Memberships[edit]

He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[18]

Record sale prices[edit]

I a sale at Heffel Auction House, Vancouver, May 25, 2016, Guido Molinari's Sans titre, 84 x 96 in 213.4 x 243.8 cm, acrylic on canvas, Estimate: $100,000 - $150,000 CDN, Sold for: $354,000 CDN (premium included).[19] In a sale of 15 June 2022 at the Cowley Abbott Auction, Toronto, Molinari's Série noir/blanc, acrylic on canvas, signed and dated “11/67” on the reverse, 81 x 68 ins ( 205.7 x 172.7 cms ), realized a price of $264,000.00.[20]

Selected works in public collections[edit]

Besides his work in national collections, his work is in the Kunstmuseum Reutlingen concrete[21]

Documentaries[edit]

  • Guido Molinari: The Colour of Memory [22]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Théberge, Pierre (1976). Guido Molinari. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. p. 50. ISBN 0888843216. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  2. ^ MacDonald, Colin S. (1979). A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol. 4 (Thirdt ed.). Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks Publishing. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Guido Molinari". www.concordia.ca. Concordia University, Montreal. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  4. ^ "Obituary". www.theglobeandmail.com. Globe and Mail. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
  5. ^ a b c "About". fondationguidomolinari.org. Guido Molinari Foundation. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
  6. ^ "Collection". macm.org. MAC. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
  7. ^ "Collection". www.gallery.ca. National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  8. ^ Seitz, William C. (1965). The responsive eye (PDF). New York: MOMA. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  9. ^ "Past Canadian Exhibitions". National Gallery of Canada at the Venice Biennale. National Gallery of Canada. Archived from the original on 13 October 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  10. ^ "Lot 021". www.heffel.com. Heffel Auction House, Post-War & Contemporary Art, November 23, 2023. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  11. ^ Dufour, Gary. "Article: Guido Molinari: Triangle vert-mauvre 1971" (PDF). www.heffel.com. Heffel Auction House, Post-War & Contemporary Art, May 23, 2024. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
  12. ^ "Article". www.wikiart.org. Wiki Encyclopedia. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  13. ^ "Article". www.mutualart.com. Mutual Art. Retrieved 25 May 2024.
  14. ^ Murray, Joan. "Molinari and Mondrian: The Spirit of Destruction". www.agh.ca. Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2002, p. 16. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
  15. ^ a b Osborne, Catherine (29 February 2004). "Nine things you need to know…". National Post.
  16. ^ "Guido Molinari". www.gf.org. Guggenheim Fellowship. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
  17. ^ "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  18. ^ "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  19. ^ "Works". www.heffel.com. Heffel Auction House. Retrieved 20 May 2024.
  20. ^ "Guido Molinari". cowleyabbott.ca. Cowley Abbott Auction. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  21. ^ "Collection". www.kunstmuseum-reutlingen.de. Kunstmuseum Reitlingen. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  22. ^ Guido Molinari : The Colour of Memory Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
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