Sculptor, art dealer, gallery owner, Frederick Lessore was born in Southwick, Sussex, February 19, 1879. His grandfather was Emile Lessore (the Wedgwood ceramics painter). His sister was the painter (Elaine) Thérèse Lessore. He married the painter Helen Lessore (née Brook). Founded the Beaux Arts Gallery, London, England (1923-1965) and served as director with his wife, Helen Lessore from 1923 to 1951. He died November 14, 1951.
Micah Lexier (1960- ) has established a national and international recognition as an artist, curator, and avid collector. His artistic practice is rooted in conceptual art and is often characterized by its collaborative nature. He works across a multitude of media which include sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and installation. Lexier’s artworks are often recognized for their engagement with concepts such as time, language, and the everyday, which are emphasized through his preference for process over the end product, and an artistic methodology that centers around documenting, collecting, and organizing.
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Lexier studied at the University of Manitoba, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1982. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in 1984. Lexier then spent more than a decade living and working in Toronto, before moving abroad to New York in 1999. In 2008 he returned to Toronto, where he has since remained.
In 2015 Lexier received the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. His extensive exhibition history includes over 100 solo exhibitions and more than 200 group exhibitions. He has also been commissioned to produce more than a dozen public art installations at venues including the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery (1991), Toronto’s Metro Hall (1992), and Toronto’s Bay-Adelaide Centre (2016). His work is in many major Canadian and international collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the British Museum, and the Contemporary Art Gallery (Sydney, Australia). In 2013, Lexier exhibited a landmark solo show at The Power Plant (Toronto, ON) entitled One, and Two, and More Than Two. The “one” portion of the show presented a 30 year retrospective of his work in the form of an artwork entitled Working as a Drawing. It was complemented by parts “two” and “more than two,” which showcased his practice in collaboration with more than 100 Toronto artists.
Arthur Lismer, painter and art educator, was born in Sheffield, England in 1885. He studied at the Sheffield School of Art 1899–1906 and later at the Académie royale des beaux-arts in Antwerp. In 1911 he immigrated to Toronto where he worked as a commercial illustrator for the Grip Engraving Company and taught at the Ontario College of Art. He married Esther Mawson in 1912 and their only child Marjorie was born in 1913. Lismer's career as an art educator began at the Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax, 1916–1919, followed soon after by his appointment as Vice-President of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. In 1920 he became a founding member of the Group of Seven. His best-known works in oil are wilderness landscapes, expressionist in style with a use of raw colour and simplified form. He also produced many works on paper, including several portraits. Lismer established a Children's Art Centre at the Art Gallery of Toronto, where he was educational supervisor, 1927–1938. He was briefly educational supervisor at the National Gallery of Canada, later holding that post at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1967. He was assistant professor of fine arts at McGill University, 1948–1954. He died in Montreal in 1969. Arthur Lismer was a member of the Arts and Letters Club, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Canadian Group of Painters, Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and Federation of Canadian Artists. His work is in many Canadian public collections. Following her father’s death, Marjorie Lismer Bridges devoted a number of years to organizing his archival records and gradually donating them to public repositories. She wrote the “Arthur Lismer source book”, which is included in the fonds.
Frances Norma Loring, sculptor, was born in Wardner, Idaho October 14, 1887. She studied sculpture in Geneva, Munich and Paris 1901-1905. In 1905 at the Art Institute of Chicago, she met Florence Wyle with whom she subsequently shared studios in New York (1909-1912) and Toronto (1912-1966). A member in 1920 of the Ontario Society of Artists, she was a founding member (1928) of the Sculptors' Society of Canada and a chief organizer of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the National Arts Council. Among her best-known public monuments are the lion of the Queen Elizabeth Monument in Toronto (originally near the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth Way) and war memorials at St Stephen, New Brunswick and Cambridge (formerly Galt), Ontario. Frances Loring died in Newmarket, Ontario February 3, 1968. Florence Wyle, sculptor, was born in Trenton, Illinois November 24, 1881. While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905, she met Frances Loring, with whom she later moved to New York. Loring moved to Canada in 1912, where Wyle joined her the following year. They each produced a considerable body of work in their studio, a converted church, in Toronto. A member of the Ontario Society of Artists (1920), Wyle was the first woman sculptor to become a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy. She was also a published writer (Poems, 1958). Among her public sculptures is the relief of Edith Cavell on the grounds of the Toronto General Hospital. Florence Wyle died in Newmarket, Ontario January 13, 1968. Loring & Wyle’s works are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian War Museum and in several public and private buildings in Ontario.
Kenneth Lund served as president of the Board of Directors of Galerie Scollard, later Factory 77.
Thoreau MacDonald (1901–1989) was a Canadian artist, book illustrator and art editor. Son of Harriet Joan Lavis and Group of Seven painter J.E.H. MacDonald, he was born outside Toronto and named for American transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). Largely self-taught, Thoreau MacDonald worked with his father to develop his artistic ability. His prints and drawings are chiefly in black and white owing to colour blindness. He never married. Thoreau MacDonald’s working career was spent for the most part at the Ryerson Press and Canadian Forum magazine, for which he produced hundreds of drawings and linocuts. In 1933 he became a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters. He was especially regarded for his prints and drawings of subjects from nature. In the late 1930s he founded the Woodchuck Press in Thornhill, Ont. to produce bookplates and labels along with illustrated publications. Thoreau MacDonald died in Toronto in 1989. His work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hart House at the University
of Toronto, the McMichael Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.
Newton McFaul MacTavish (1875-1941) was a Canadian journalist, art critic and early art historian. Born in Staffa, Ontario, he became a reporter at The Toronto Globe in 1896 and was its assistant financial editor until 1900. From then until 1906, he studied English literature at McGill University while working as a correspondent and business representative of The Globe in Montreal. In 1903 he married Kate Johnson. Between 1906 and 1926, MacTavish was the editor of The Canadian Magazine in Toronto. In 1910 he travelled to Europe and visited the Canadian artists J.W. Morrice and John Wentworth Russell in Paris. He subsequently (1922-1933) served as a trustee of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia conferred honorary degrees on Newton MacTavish in 1924 (M.A.) and 1928 (D. Litt.). From 1926 to 1932 he was a member of the Civil Service Commission of Canada. A founder of the Arts and Letters Club (Toronto), he was also on the editorial advisory board of and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Canada (1932-1935). In addition to his articles, essays and short stories, MacTavish was the author of Thrown In (1923), The Fine Arts in Canada (1925, the first full-length history of Canadian art), and Ars Longa (1938). A fourth work, Newton MacTavish’s Canada, was published posthumously in 1963. He died in Toronto in 1941.
Robert Nelson Markle (Hamilton, Ontario, 1936-Holstein, Ontario, 1990) was a Canadian artist, writer, educator and musician. He began his studies at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1954, but was expelled before graduation. While at OCA, he met Marlene Shuster, a fellow student, whom he married in 1958. The focus of Markle’s work from his early days was the female nude, particularly burlesque dancers, and Marlene became his primary model and muse. In 1962 Markle had his first group exhibition at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the “Isaacs Group” of artists. In 1965, Markle paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall-sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. He executed painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.
Tanya Mars (1948- ) is a feminist performance and video artist, educator, and arts administrator active mainly in Toronto, Ontario. She was born in Monroe, Michigan and attended Fine Arts courses at the University of Michigan. In 1967 she moved to Montreal with her former husband where she attained landed immigrant status in Canada. She attended Fine Arts courses at Sir George Williams University and Loyola College (now incorporated into Concordia University) before eventually moving to Toronto in 1979. She has been an integral figure in the Canadian art scene since her 1974 exhibition Codpieces: Phallic Paraphernalia. She has performed widely across Canada and also internationally in Chile, Mexico, Sweden, France, Poland, China and Finland. Mars’ approach to art is interdisciplinary, borrowing themes and performance techniques from vaudeville, theatre, stand-up comedy, film, photography, magic shows, and dance. In her early works, she would center a repertoire of vibrant female characters within layers of visually rich, satirical, absurdist imagery to disrupt and question sociopolitical relations of power and cultural narratives of gender (e.g. “Pure” series). For Mars, the live presence is critical. Her art is an ongoing process involving an interactive experience with her audience, leading to a dialogue of meanings that only become materialized when the piece is performed (e.g. Competing for Space). Furthermore, she directly involves herself as both a performer and a physical object (e.g. Tanya-in-the-Box) whereby the human body and its movement or constraint becomes an integral component of each piece. In doing so, she explores the relationships between costume and wearable art, presentation, sculpture, and spectacle to speak to how the body engages with materials to inform how we perceive ourselves and our social conditions. In the 1980s, Mars began to incorporate video art into her repertoire, creating video adaptations of her live performance art (e.g. Mz Frankenstein), however she views these as creative adaptations designed for home consumption rather than documentations of the live experience. Since the 1990s, Mars has shifted her artistic direction towards creating immersive, site-specific, durational performance art featuring evolving tableaux vivant structured around repetitive tasks (e.g. Hot, Tyranny of Bliss, In Pursuit of Happiness).
Mars was a founding member, curator, and director of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montreal from 1974-1978, editor of Parallelogramme magazine from 1977-1989, and a board member of ANNPAC (the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-run Centres) from 1977-1989. Since 1998 she has been a member of the 7a*11d Collective which produces a bi-annual International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto. She previously taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Most recently, she taught performance art and video at the University of Toronto Scarborough and was part of the graduate faculty of the Master of Visual Studies Program at the University of Toronto. In 2004 Mars was named Artist of the Year at the Untitled Arts Awards in Toronto and she is also the winner of a 2008 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. In 2014 she received an honorary doctorate from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University.