Guido Molinari

Guido Molinari Template:Post-nominals L.L. D. (October 12, 1933 – February 21, 2004) was a Canadian artist, known nationally and internationally for his serial abstract paintings and their dynamic interplay of colours and focus on modular shapes. His Stripe series is especially celebrated. Molinari himself described their effect - and the effect of all his paintings - as creating a new kind of fictional space "because it happens in the mind and yet also involves the totality of perception".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Biography

Molinari was born in Montreal, Quebec into a family originally from the Abruzzo region in Italy. He was the son of Charles Molinari (1879–1948), a musician with the Orchestre des concerts symphoniques de Montréal and first president of the Quebec Musicians' Association; and of Evelyne Dini (1889–1966), the daughter of a sculptor so his childhood was culturally rich.<ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " >Template:Cite web</ref> He began painting at age 13 and later enrolled at the School of the Art Association of Montreal, studying with Marian Dale Scott and Gordon Webber (1948–1951). A year later he contracted tuberculosis. While he was convalescing, he studied existentialism, reading authors such as Sartre, Camus, Piaget and Nietzsche.<ref name="macDonald " >Template:Cite book</ref> He did not complete his formal training in art but found his own path.<ref name="concordia " />

Early in his career, Molinari read a 1955 article about Jackson Pollock dripping paint onto canvas and went to New York to paint abstractly.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He then returned to Montreal where he held his first solo exhibition at L'Échourie,<ref name="GM Foundation " >Template:Cite web</ref> founded the Galerie L'Actuelle with Fernande Saint-Martin, his future wife (also in 1955)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and was one of the founding members of The Non-Figurative Artists' Association of Montreal in 1956.<ref name="concordia " /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Between 1963 and 1969, he created hard edge paintings consisting of colour in vertical bands of equal width placed on a flat picture plane called the Stripe series. The National Gallery of Canada,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> acquired a canvas from the series.

Molinari was selected by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim International Award 1964 exhibition.<ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " /><ref name="dufour, nov.2023 " >Template:Cite web</ref> His paintings were seen in New York, Honolulu, Berlin, Ottawa and Buenos Aires.<ref name="dufour, nov.2023 " /> In 1965, his works appeared in The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York along with works by artists such as Frank Stella.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> They were also seen in The Deceived Eye in Fort Worth, Texas; and in a fourth show, a New York solo exhibition at East Hampton Gallery. His work was described by reviewers in glowing terms as "Pop spelled 'Pow!'— in these handsome paintings the message comes across visually".<ref name="dufour, nov.2023 " />

In 1967, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1968, the prestigious David Bright Prize at the 34th Biennale di Venezia for which he and Ulysse Comtois had been selected by Brydon Smith.<ref name="dufour, nov.2023 " /><ref name=NGC_Venice >Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " /> From 1969 to 1970, Molinari created "checkerboard" paintings (he titled them "Structures") dividing the verticals by the horizontal<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and in 1971, he began to bisect each stripe, creating a new format of triangles.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In the late 1970s, he created the Quantificateur series<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and, in the years before his death, the Checkerboard paintings (he called them the Continuum series).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Molinari taught for 27 years at Sir George Williams University and Concordia University, retiring in 1997.<ref name="concordia " /> In 2004, Concordia recognized him with a posthumous honorary doctorate.<ref name="concordia " >Template:Cite web</ref>

An avid art collector, his extensive private collection included the work of Mondrian and the manuscript pages of Mondrian's original defition of Neo-Plasticism (1926),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Matisse, John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Quebec artists Denis Juneau, John Lyman, and Ozias Leduc. His obituary in the National Post quoted the then director of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Matthew Teitelbaum, as saying he owned Barnett Newman, Richard Serra, Francis Bacon, Piet Mondrian and Ellsworth Kelly.<ref name="Osborne " >Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1997, he established the 'Molinari Quartet' through the Molinari Foundation, a group that has been active now for twenty-five plus years.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2004, Guido Molinari died of pneumonia after having bone cancer which migrated from his lungs.<ref name="Osborne " /> His East Montreal studio at 3290 St. Catherine Street East remains intact and open to the public.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Selected public exhibitions

From 1953, Molinari exhibited his work, primarily in America and Europe. His first solo museum survey was organised by the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina in 1964 and toured to the Vancouver Art Gallery.<ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " /> He had exhibitions or was included in group shows in a host of other institutions, including in Guido Molinari: 1951-1961, Peintures en noir et blanc/ The Black and White Paintings (1961) curated and catalogue by Gary Dufour which toured Canada;<ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " /> the Guggenheim Museum (Guggenheim International Award show, 1964, and in 1967); the Museum of Modern Art in New York (The Responsive Eye, 1965); in 49th Parallels: New Canadian Art (1971), Ringling Museum of Art curated and catalogue by Dennis Young;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> at the National Gallery of Canada (retrospective curated and catalogue by Pierre Théberge, 1976); and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (retrospective, 1995).<ref name="GM Foundation/ Chronology " />

Selected works in public collections

Molinari's work is in national collections and in international collections such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the Kunstmuseum Reutlingen concrete.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honours and awards

Molinari won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> the David Bright Prize at the 34th Venice Biennale (1968), was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1971, received the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (1973)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and won the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas in 1980.<ref name="concordia " />

Memberships

He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1969).<ref name=RCA1880 >Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="GM Foundation" />

Record sale prices

At a sale at Heffel Auction House, Vancouver, May 25, 2016, Guido Molinari's Sans titre, 84 x 96 in 213.4 x 243.8 cm, acrylic on canvas, Estimate: $100,000 - $150,000 CDN, sold for: $354,000 CDN (premium included).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In a sale of 15 June 2022 at the Cowley Abbott Auction, Toronto, Molinari's Série noir/blanc, acrylic on canvas, signed and dated "11/67" on the reverse, 81 x 68 ins ( 205.7 x 172.7 cms ), realized a price of $264,000.00.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Documentaries

• Guido Molinari: The Colour of Memory<ref>Guido Molinari : The Colour of Memory Template:Webarchive</ref>