The McMaster Museum of Art proudly presents:

TAKAO TANABE: Chronicles of Form and Place

August 18 – December 8, 2012

The artist will be in attendance at a Public Reception Thursday September 13, 6-8 pm and will present an Artist Talk/Tour of the exhibition on Friday September 14, 12:30 pm.

Over his long career, west coast artist Takao Tanabe (b. 1926) has gained acclaim as one of Canada’s most important painters. He has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, and is represented in the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and many other public and private collections. For his enormous contribution to the arts, Tanabe has been honoured with the Order of Canada, and the Governor General’s Award.

This first ever sweeping retrospective exhibition of Tanabe’s works on paper, drawn from the collection of the artist and the Vancouver Art Gallery, features drawings and watercolours from 1949 to the present day. Many of the more than 60 works had never been publicly displayed prior to this project. The exhibition examines the artist’s career, working in Canada and overseas, and how his visual language — both pictorial and abstract — offers a test of looking and knowing.

Chronicles of Form and Place is co-curated by Ihor Holubizky (Senior Curator at the McMaster Museum of Art) and Darrin Martens (Director/Curator at the BurnabyArtGallery, where the exhibition was shown in November 2011).

An exhibition catalogue with essays by Ihor Holubizky, Denise Leclerc, and Darrin Martens is forthcoming.