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A Vintage Bloore for
A Contemporary Gallery
(June 3, 2023)

Contemporary Calgary is a non-collecting, event oriented art gallery. And it's annual LOOK fundraiser party and auction is a big Calgary event. The Bloore Estate's donation this year, a significant painting from 1998, looks as contemporary as ever and will certainly be a highlight of the show.

August 1998, Untitled No.3, oil on masonite, 91x122cm
Click to look close

In 1998 Bloore made a brief diversion - five paintings - from white-on-white. Three of these featured in the 2005 semi-retrospective in Peterborough and the series is discussed in Illi Tamplin's catalog essay here. This particular work hung in the "Blue Series and a New Series" show at the Moore Gallery in Toronto in 2001 and the "Untitled" show at the Wallace Galleries in Calgary in 2016 here.

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Ron Bloore returns to Toronto
New estate releases at
RUMI GALLERIES

July 29 1964, ink on paper, 33 x 51cm, click to see larger

Since the closing of the Moore Gallery at 80 Spadina in 2013, the Bloore Estate has not had a Toronto dealer. Some intrepid local collectors have got their Bloores shipped from shows we have held in Calgary. But this era comes to an end now with these first consignments to Joseph Rumi.

two in Oakville...

1983, June 16-19, oil on masonite, 91 x 122cm, click to see larger

There are two Rumi locations, one amidst the hustle and bustle of the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood and the second in the quiet downtown of nearby Oakville. And Bloores are now at both places. The 1964 pen and ink drawing above is on display this autumn in Oakville and the 4x5 painting from 1983 just above is also there.

... two on display in Toronto
October 20 - November 19, 2021

1980, Jan.26, #18, ink and gouache on paper, 46 x 61cm, click to see larger

At the uptown location, as part of the 20th and 21st Century Canadian Art survey show, Ron Bloore was represented by these two works on paper from the same day in January 1980 hung side by side.

1980, Jan.26, #20, ink and gouache on paper, 46 x 61cm, click to see larger

And below is the cool 3x4 "Sackville Series" painting from 1979 which is also, at least for the moment, available for viewing at that gallery.

1979, July 4, oil on masonite, 91 x 122cm,

... and more to come

1980, August 7, gouache on paper, 46 x 61cm, click to see larger

Many more works, including these gray gouache on paper works are on hand at the galleries and a Bloore solo exhibition will be held this fall.

1980, August 6, gouache on paper, 46 x 61cm, click to see larger

More information about the Rumi Galleries is at their web site here.

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Ken Lochhead and Ron Bloore
A Match Made in Regina, 1958

Together Again in Calgary
September - October, 2021

Ken and Ron at a Tony Urquhart opening in Toronto in 2000

Ken Lochhead (1926 – 2006) and Ron Bloore (1925 – 2009) showing together raises two questions which in turn raise two questions: What do their works have in common? In what ways do they differ? And What did they themselves have in common? How did they differ?

They were both born in late May, but they were born a year apart, both in Ontario, but Ken in Ottawa, Ron near Toronto. They both pursued dual careers painting and teaching and their careers intersected geographically more than once but their approaches to, their opinions on, their attitudes toward, their every sentiment and idea regarding both painting and teaching could not have been more opposite. They would both insist that that last statement is not true at all and they would both admit privately that it is in fact quite true. Ken would call it a difference of personality, Ron, a difference of understanding.

Ken and Ron became colleagues and lifelong friends in Regina around 1958 at Regina College in very eventful times, times fraught with tumult, some that is controversial to this day, and on the cultural level, these two were at the two eyes of that hurricane. Insofar as an issue had two sides, these two friends tended to be, temperamentally at least, on opposing sides while fighting ideologically for the same side. Bloore touches on some of this in the fascinating, though somewhat disjoint, interview with Joan Murray from 1973.

But what do their artworks have in common? And how do they differ?

Bloore and Lochhead had never shown together just the two of them and, given the differences touched on above, this is no surprise. But for these four weeks in Calgary, the works spoke for themselves, spoke for their makers and spoke to each other. We saw two very different, experimental, masterful painters side by side, if not exactly together.

Our review of the show is here and the Wallace Galleries preview is here.

Wallace Galleries, Calgary Alberta
Sept.25 - Oct.20, 2021

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The Peel Art Gallery

Come for the paintings, stay for the drawings
( Jan - May 2019 )

In Brampton, Ontario where Ron Bloore was born and raised the Peel Art Gallery put on a real museum show. “Ronald Bloore: Black and White” curated by Darrin Martens, was a concentrated delving into the artist's ideas about composition as reflected in one particular series of his works. And there was more:

1982, Painting, oil on masonite, 109 x 244 cm, Peel Art Gallery Collection
(Click the image to see it VERY large and here to see more of the show.)

In another space at the gallery and concurrent with the Bloore solo exhibition, the “Selections from the Vault,” series show titled “Abstraction in Canada” featured three major white-on-white Bloore paintings including the four by eight foot work from 1982 shown above. Just as a side note: in 2006 the artist himself donated a work from the same series of paintings to the National Capital Commission in Ottawa. It can be seen here on the site in the Eighties pages. Also hanging were two four-by-four square works from 1982 and 1992. This exhibition ran from February 7th to May 5th.

Ronald Bloore: Black and White

24 of the exhibition’s 31 Sumi ink works

“Ronald Bloore: Black and White” was up from January 31st to May 26th and there were three events on three Sunday afternoons.

On February 10th the curator Darrin Martens gave a talk on Bloore's approach to compositional space. And on February 24th there was the “opening reception” for the two winter shows alongside a rather elaborate opening celebration of the North to Freedom photography show in the Peel Museum next door.

April 7th brought guest speaker Timothy Long, Head Curator of the Mackenzie Gallery of Regina to give a talk, “Ron Bloore and the Art of Provocation” which focused mainly on Bloore's efforts and adventures as a figure in the art world, particularly as Director of the Mackenzie Gallery from 1958 to ’66.

Bloore always felt, and declared, that to be provocative was an essential requirement of art. It could be humourous and it could be pleasing, but it should also be ambiguous and also disturbing. It must always provoke the viewer to question himself. It must take him aback to provoke pushing forward, to promote a desire to understand just what progress might be.

As the director of the Mackenzie Gallery Bloore saw it as his job to be provocative for the sake of the advancement of culture. He later approached the tasks of public speaker, critic and commentator on art the same way. And as an instructor and professor the mission and the method were again the same. Even chatting over a drink, or seated at a pleasant dinner Bloore’s often very ambiguous provocations and occasionally disturbing humour were well known. Snapshots of his many modes are here.

1981, Drawing, March 27, Sumi ink on Arches paper, 28 x 38 cm, Peel Art Gallery Collection
(Click to look closer)

A recent commercial show at the Wallace Galleries in Calgary featured three black sumis and two are still there. They can be seen up close here. Our page devoted to black works is here.

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Canadian Art History
on the block at Heffel
(November 2018)

1960 is now a world, or two, away. In 1960, Regina Saskatchewan was, as in the title of Mark Wihak's film about the Regina Five, “A World Away.” And in Regina from 1958 to 1966 Ron Bloore was a world away.

1960, Painting, August, oil on masonite, 122 x 122 cm
Click to look close

In 1962 Bloore went for two years on a Canada Arts Council Fellowship Grant many, vast worlds away. He went to Byzantium and to Greece and on to Egypt and to the mosques of Istambul. He then proceeded to destroy almost every artwork he had done that he could get his hands on, except the few that had been on the track which he now knew was the one to pursue.

This work, perhaps more clearly than any other, contains many of the essential, now famous, elements of that post-elimination track. This is why Bloore wrote NFS (Not For Sale) on the back of the painting when it showed in museums in the mid-seventies. But it sold this month in Toronto.

The trip to Greece is a story yet to be taken up directly by the author of this site but it is briefly told by Terrence Heath in his Not Without Design catalog essay, which is on the site, here.

There is a gallery of a selection of Bloore's works from the early sixties on the site here.