Full Description
Woldemar Neufeld (1909-2002) emigrated with his Mennonite parents from Ukraine to Canada in 1924. By the late 1920s, he had begun his lifelong project as documentarist, responding especially to the built environment, whether close to his home in southern Ontario or farther afield: northern Ontario, the prairies and the west coast, the Maritimes and Quebec. His work passed through a number of styles, from the coolly abstract to the vividly ""realistic."" Although he never abandoned oils, he produced a substantial body of watercolours and block prints - the latter influenced by German Expressionist and Japanese printmaking approaches.
Woldemar Neufeld's Canada, a record of Neufeld's Canadian paintings and block prints, explores influences that shaped Neufeld's career as it developed in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s and came to fruition from 1940s to the 1990s. Early on, Neufeld came into contact with leading Canadian artists, from Homer Watson to members of the Group of Seven. During the 1930s, he began to participate in group and solo exhibitions, including a one-man show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. After studies in Cleveland, he settled in New York City (1945) and New England (1949). Until the 1990s, however, he continued to work in Canada, returning especially to document, in various media, urban and rural landscapes in southern Ontario.
Contents
Woldemar Neufeld's Canada: A Mennonite Artist in the Canadian Landscape 1925-1995, edited by Laurence Neufeld and Monika McKillen; text by Hildi Froese Tiessen and Paul Gerard Tiessen
Arrival in Canada 1924-25
Building Bridges
European Roots: Russia
Forgetting Russia
""Russian Mennonites"" in Canada
""Ontario Mennonites"" and ""Waterloo County""
The Canadian Art Scene: Homer Watson and the Group of Seven
Early Years in Canada 1925-35
At Home and Away
Block Printing: Black and White
Art Society of Kitchener
Early Exhibitions
An Emerging Career
Crossing Borders 1935-44
From Canada to Cleveland
Printing and Painting in the Canadian West
Visiting Canada 1945-68
American Neighbourhoods
Excursions into Abstraction
Waterloo Revival 1968-95
Notes
References
Plates
Paintings and Drawings
Block Prints
