Members of the Kureleks Canada exhibit and lecture committee met with Jean Kurelek, widow of the internationally reknowned Ukrainian Canadian artist, Willam Kurelek. The meeting took place April 21 at Torontos St Demetrius Ukrainian Catholic Church, during the churchs annual Flowers of Spring art show.
The exhibit of Kureleks works and a lecture series are scheduled for early November, and will run for two weeks at the Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation in Bloor West Village.
The organizing committee, made up of board members from both the UCAF and the Toronto branch of the Ukrainian Professional and Business Association has met to develop a plan of action and schedule of events that will feature in addition to the exhibit a lecture series, film screenings, and other activities.
William Kurelek, who died of cancer in October 1977 at age 50, has been called one of Canadas best-loved painters, while journalists have dubbed him the Peoples Painter. He was born in 1927 near Whitford, Alberta to Ukrainian Canadian pioneers. Strongly influenced by his surroundings, he is best known for his realistic landscapes, and for his paintings of the many ethnic groups who settled in Canada Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish and Irish, among others.
Though he struggled to find his own artistic voice in his early years, after his return to Canada and conversion to Catholicism in 1959, lady luck seemed to look his way. In 1960 he was discovered by the Jewish art dealer Av Isaacs, owner of the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto.
Later, Kurelek became known as an artist with a strong social conscience. In the years before his death, he worked at a frenzied pace, producing a tremendous body of work that covered diverse topics, ranging from criticism of abortion to the famous series Passion of Christ. His mission in those last years, as Kurelek biographer Patricia Morley interpreted it, was to paint sermons that would save a world plagued by secular humanism.
More information about Kure-leks Canada will be made available to the public as the show approaches.