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GORDON SMITH EarlyWorks

Equinox Gallery Vancouver

Gordon Smith, 1953

The works in this catalogue and exhibition were collected and assembled by Equinox Gallery over the past two decades.

Gordon Smith: Early Works

This exhibition features an overview of Gordon Smith’s early works that mark the arc of his artistic journey from representation to abstraction. It begins with depictions of British Columbia made in the 1940s, concluding with the bold explosions of pure colour created in the mid 1960s. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to consider how Smith’s artistic path was not a direct one, instead, it swung regularly between representational images of subjects that were highly personal or revelatory to him, followed by plunges into the depths of abstraction where the manipulation of paint was the driving force in creating compelling compositions. This successive pivoting towards and away from recognizable imagery was a constant throughout Smith’s artistic life from his 20s through to his late 90s.

Works from the 1940s convey Gordon Smith’s early explorations of the landscape. Having come to Vancouver in 1944 after being injured in Sicily during WW2, Smith’s first years were spent in physical rehabilitation, the study of art, and a familiarization of his new home. One can view the early pastoral scenes of the Lower Mainland, his portrayals of urban sites of Vancouver (which at that time was a provincial, resource-driven, settler town), and his curiosity about Indigenous settlements at Alert Bay where he camped and painted enpleinair, as a way of grounding himself in British Columbia, where he lived for the rest of his life. By the 1950s, especially after his life-changing summer studying with Elmer Bischoff at the California School of Fine Art where he claims to have really learned about the ‘act of painting,’ his work shifted fundamentally. Rather than opting for straightforward rendering of objects, painting became an exciting opportunity for Smith to apply paint on canvas, to consider the next brush stroke in response to the previous one, to play with the adjacencies of colour, to make marks and textures, and to create tension through the effects of light and dark. Vancouver’s post-war optimism is echoed in Smith’s own growing confidence of the mid 1950s during which time he won first prize at the First Biennial of Canadian Painting held at the National Gallery of Canada in 1953 and exhibited at the Guggenheim in New York in 1956. The works from this era utilize a strong underlying grid that, depending on his chosen palette, are suggestive of the urban foundations of suburban expansion, or alternately, the linearity of the deep forest that surrounded Smith’s home environment.

The early 1960s brought Gordon Smith greater national and international exposure when he travelled across the country, represented Canada at the Sao Paulo Biennial, and with the aid of a Canada Council senior fellowship visited museums in New York and throughout Europe to see first-hand the works of his peers of the modern period and the giants who

came before him. This exhibition culminates with the dynamic pieces from the 1960s, where Smith loosens the grid, at times losing it completely into folds of exhilarating colour. He expands his painting vocabulary yet again with compositions that are balanced yet incredibly spirited and complex, even emotional, and as a result he is recognized as one of the most prominent artists working in Canada at the time.

Gordon Smith was born in 1919 in East Brighton, Great Britain. Over the course of his painting career, he became recognized as one of Canada’s most important modernists, working continuously to expand the dialogue between abstraction and representation. His painting practice was defined by both a limitless pursuit of knowledge and inspiration, coupled with an unrivaled discipline in the studio. Smith explained, “I literally paint six hours a day, but it doesn’t just happen there. I think about it in the morning when I get up, I dream about it, I think about it all the time. I see something that starts to trigger ideas. I’m tired most of the time but when I’m painting, I’m never tired, because I’ve got that wonderful dialogue with the paint.”

Gordon Smith's many major awards include the Order of Canada (1996), Order of British Columbia (2000), Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2009) and Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2007). In 1976 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. His work has been collected in public and private collections around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Museum of Modern Art (New York) and Victoria and Albert Museum (London). Smith was the recipient of several honorary degrees, including Honorary Doctorates from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. Gordon Smith died in 2020 at the age of 100 in West Vancouver.

Nocturne, c. 1961

Oil on canvas

34 ½” x 43 ½”

Available – please contact sophie@equinoxgallery.com for details

GORDON SMITH