Guido Molinari

Guido Molinari, painter (b at Montréal 12 Oct 1933, d there 21 Feb 2004). He studied briefly at the School of Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1950-51), and began making drawings and paintings combining automatic methods with a disciplined approach. He was a leader in the development of a rigorous colour abstraction in Montréal. Characteristic of his paintings in the 1960s were vertical, hard-edged bands of colour. Pictorial space in these paintings was created by the spectator's perception of the shifting and mixing of the colours. More recently, colour in his work had been reduced to very dark values, and rather than narrow bands, the paintings were divided into 2 to 5 large vertical sections. In 1956 Molinari was a founding member of the Association des artistes non-figuratifs de Montréal. He exhibited at the Biennale in Venice in 1968, where he was awarded the David E. Bright Foundation prize. In 1977 he participated in the Paris Biennale, and in 1980 he was awarded the Paul-Émile BORDUAS Prize by the Québec government. Molinari, who taught at Concordia University until 1997, exerted a powerful influence on younger artists, through his teaching, his theoretical writing and his opinions, firmly held and strongly stated. The exhibition Guido Molinari: 1951-1961, Peintures en noir et blanc was organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1989 and toured the country.

Author MARILYN BURNETT

Suggested Reading
D. Burnett, Quantificateur (1979); P. Théberge, Guido Molinari, (1976).