William Kurelek’s Art of Rapture and Reminiscence

The art of William Kurelek (1927–1977) navigated the unsentimental reality of Depression-era farm life and plumbed the sources of the artist’s debilitating mental suffering. His paintings represent an unconventional, unsettling, and controversial record of global anxiety in the twentieth century. Oscillating between the nostalgic and the nightmarish, Kurelek’s oeuvre is also concerned with the common struggles that divide and bind the human family. For more on William Kurelek read Andrew Kear’s William Kurelek: Life & Work.

Andrew Kear is chief curator and curator of Canadian art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and a sessional lecturer in Canadian art at the University of Winnipeg. He has written and curated exhibitions on a diverse range of Canadian artists, including William Kurelek.