Tom Hodgson, member of the pioneering Canadian abstract group Painters Eleven, 81
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Last Updated Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:17:50 EST
CBC Arts
Tom Hodgson, a member of the pioneering Canadian abstract group
Painters Eleven, has died at the age of 81.
A memorial service will be held Tuesday at the Balmy Beach Canoe Club
in Toronto.
The Toronto artist, one of the younger members of Painters Eleven, died
Feb. 27 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
"It's the passing of an era," Linda Jansma, curator of the Robert
McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ont., told CBC Arts Online on Monday.
With most of the Painters Eleven having already died, Hodgson was among
the dwindling representatives of the pioneering 1950s era, Jansma said,
noting "the importance of that group for Canadian art."
Raised on Toronto's Centre Island, Hodgson had a childhood filled with
activity, taking part in both water sports on Lake Ontario and art
classes that were organized by Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer at
what was then known as the Art Gallery of Toronto, now the Art Gallery
of Ontario.
In addition to studying art at Central Technical School and at the
Ontario College of Art, Hodgson served two years in the Royal Canadian
Air Force. Also a member of the Canadian Olympic canoe team, he
competed in Helsinki in 1952 and in Melbourne in 1956 and remained a
competitive canoe racer for much of his life.
The Birth of Painters Eleven
In the 1950s, Hodgson and two of his Central Tech classmates, Kazuo
Nakamura and Harold Town, were among a group of similarly minded
Ontario artists who were growing increasingly frustrated with Toronto's
stuffy cultural and artistic establishment.
In October 1953, Hodgson and Nakamura took part in an interesting
exhibit spearheaded by one of their painter colleagues, William Ronald,
who also did window displays for the former Simpsons department store
in downtown Toronto.
Ronald's Abstracts at Home exhibit showcased the work of Hodgson,
Nakamura, Alexandra Luke, Jack Bush, Oscar Cahen and Ray Mead amid
rooms of furniture displays at the Queen Street department store. His
goal was to show Canadians that abstract art had a place inside the
average home.
The participants of the exhibit felt a kinship and decided to meet
again the following month, adding four more to their collective: Town,
Hortense Gordon, Walter Yarwood and Jock Macdonald.
Town suggested the name Painters Eleven for the new collective and for
the next few years, the group of avant-garde abstract painters met,
exhibited together regularly around Toronto and throughout Ontario and
helped usher in Toronto's acceptance of modernism.
Unlike their predecessors in the Group of Seven, the members of the
Painters Eleven did not ascribe to a particular aesthetic in their art.
Spanning in age from their mid-20s to nearly 70 years old, the members
had no formal leader or structure and, for the most part, remained
loosely affiliated.
"Instead of having a grand manifesto ... this was a group that got
together to join forces so that they could get exhibitions, try to sell
their work," Jansma said.
"They decided to take the bull by the horns and put their own destinies
together."
Despite battling against anti-modernist Toronto critics in subsequent
years, the group eventually helped open Canadian eyes to modern art.
However, after Cahen died in a car accident in 1956 and Ronald and Mead
relocated to New York and Montreal, the Painters Eleven began to grow
apart. In October 1960, the remaining members voted to disband.
After the group separated, Hodgson did some consulting work as a
commercial advertising artist and taught at OCA from 1968 through 1973.
He also self-published the book Creativity and Change in 1975.
Life after Eleven
Over the years, Hodgson continued adapting and evolving his own style,
moving from earlier work influenced by his commercial art to abstract
pieces inspired by everyday items around him to later collections of
figurative and erotic art. He continued to paint until his Alzheimer's
forced him to stop around 2000, Jansma said.
Hodgson's work has been featured in more than 20 exhibitions, including
at the AGO, Calgary's Glenbow Museum, the Galérie d'arts contemporains
de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian War
Museum in Ottawa.
His work, and that of other Painters Eleven artists, is also featured
at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. It was founded by collective member
Luke and her husband, who was an heir to the McLaughlin Carriage
Company fortune.
"Some of the other Eleven were much, much better at self-promotion.
...Tom Hodgson always took a bit of a back seat because of that,"
Jansma said.
"He didn't get caught up in the business part of [the art world]. He
was just an artist plugging away on the island."