Canada Gershon Iskowitz, Walter Redinger XXXVI Biennale di Venezia (Venezia, 1972)
CANADA GERSHON ISKOWITZ WALTER REDINGER XXXVI International Biennial Exhibition of Art, Venice 11 June - 1 October 1972 Organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In organizing this eleventh Canadian participation at the Venice Biennial, the National Gallery has had the full co-operation of the two artists, Gershon Iskowitz and Walter Redinger. Their dealers, Walter Moos and Avrom Isaacs, have lent generously to this exhibition and have provided essential documentation for the catalogue. This year, as in the past two Biennials, our Curator of Contemporary Art, Brydon Smith, has organized the exhibition while our Co-ordinator of International Exhibitions, Joanna Woods Marsden, has effectively directed the many details connected with the display in our pavilion in Venice. We are indebted to our Embassy in Rome and the Biennial officials for practical assistance during the installation and opening of the exhibition. Jean Sutherland Boggs Director INTRODUCTION Gershon Iskowitz and Walter Redinger are expressionists, in as much as they spontaneously manifest their feelings about nature through their art. But here the similarity ends. Iskowitz paints, as visual illusion induces best his visionary view of existence. Redinger sculpts, as plastic form substantiates his feelings about bodily existence. When I first came to know their respective work during the early I960's I admired the luminous beauty of Iskowitz's paintings, particularly his watercolours, and I empathized to some extent with the tortured convolutions of Redinger's sculptures. But it was only after 1967 that their work began to move me deeply. It was then that Iskowitz, in paintings such as Autumn Landscape no. 1 and no. 2, directed his vision skyward by completely breaking apart earthbound landscape images into patches of intense colour. Seen against a blue background, these coloured areas induced shimmering colour effects which optically loosened their bilaterally symmetrical placement. Iskowitz furthered this amorphous effect in later paintings, such as Seasons no. 1 of I968-I969, by freely scattering clusters of prismatic colours throughout a very pale blue sky.