Visual arts

Sculpture and handicrafts have existed since Canada’s earliest history, though it was only in the 20th century that museums and scholars began to take note of important works of art such as the stone carvings of the Inuit and the totem-pole carvings of the Northwest Coast Indigenous peoples. Since then, new kinds of Inuit sculpture and graphic work have flourished, as artists have built on their own history and also borrowed elements from Western tradition. (For more on these traditions, see arts, Native American.)

Painting has been the focus of most Canadian artists since the arrival of the Europeans. Canadian painters were greatly influenced by the styles of their European roots, but their subject matter increasingly came to be Canadian locales and landscapes. In the mid-19th century Paul Kane, an immigrant from Ireland, traveled across Canada and painted numerous canvases depicting Canadian landscapes and the lives of Indigenous people, fur traders, and missionaries—all rendered in a contemporary European genre and style. During the same period, Cornelius Krieghoff, of German descent, painted more than 2,000 canvases of anecdotal scenes in Quebec. His paintings brought new dimensions to the Canadian scene and a colourful romanticism—influenced by contemporary German trends—unsurpassed by other Canadian artists of the time. Homer Watson continued the exploration of landscapes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reflecting the influence of the American Hudson River school in his work.

After the Dominion of Canada was created in 1867, many Canadian artists attempted to form exhibiting groups that espoused a distinctly Canadian painting style, free from American and European influences. In 1907 the Canadian Art Club, a small society of painters, was formed in Toronto. Beginning in 1913, another group of painters in Toronto sought to develop a national form of painting, taking their inspiration from the Canadian landscape and the work in particular of the Canadian painter Tom Thomson. A.Y. Jackson is among the best-known of this group, which took the name Group of Seven after an exhibit in 1920. Emily Carr, a contemporary of the Group of Seven, depicted Indigenous Northwest Coast people in her art.

After the 1930s, Canadian painters generally moved away from the landscape theme. In Quebec, where art tended to be more theoretical than in the other provinces, painting evolved through a number of movements. A Surrealist-influenced group in Montreal known as Les Automatistes dominated the Canadian art scene in the 1940s, with members such as Jean-Paul Riopelle and Fernand Leduc gaining prominence. In reaction to that movement, Montreal artists such as Guido Molinari and Claude Tonsignant in the mid-1950s freed contemporary painting from its Surrealist style and directed it toward an emphasis on structure and colour. Similar trends occurred in the 1950s in Toronto, where a group called Painters Eleven, led by Harold Town and Jack Bush, promoted abstract art. By the 1960s, contemporary European and American trends—such as Pop art and conceptual art—dominated Canadian painting. Still, landscape remained the favourite theme of many painters, whether in a traditional or an avant-garde style.

Sculpture in Canada was for many years much less avidly pursued than painting. The works that were produced consisted largely of carved figures made of wood, stone, or bronze. However, beginning in the 1960s, sculptors challenged the traditional notions of form, content, and technique and took up international sculptural genres and styles such as earth art and Minimalism. Artists such as Les Levine and Michael Snow also worked as painters, but their three-dimensional work established their reputations.

In the 1970s and ’80s artists in all media explored a wide range of styles: major artists included Betty Goodwin, known for her mixed-media work and drawings; Ivan Eyre, known for his graphic figurative paintings; and Roland Poulin, known for his abstract concrete sculptures. During this period a new tradition of constructed sculpture developed in which abstract shapes were created from a variety of materials, including steel, aluminum, and plastic, and Canadian sculptors began to collaborate with architects in the design of public buildings.

By the end of the 20th century, new media such as video art and performance art were challenging the dominance of painting and traditional forms of sculpture. An increasing number of museum and gallery spaces were being opened to promote the work of contemporary Canadian artists; particularly notable was the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which opened in Toronto in 1999. At the beginning of the 21st century, art in Canada was marked by a questioning of the nature of art, as well as by experimentation and innovation. The resulting work has ranged from the intensely personal to public discourses about social and environmental issues.