Bertram BrookerLife & Work

Best known as one of Canada’s first painters to exhibit abstract work in Canada, Bertram Brooker (1888–1955) was an advertising executive, critic, and self-taught artist. Bertram Brooker: Life & Work traces the career of a remarkable visionary ahead of his time, illuminating how the talented polymath led a new era of the arts in Canada.

After relocating to Toronto from Manitoba in 1921 to join the staff of Marketing magazine, Brooker became friends with members of the Group of Seven—in particular Lawren Harris, who shared his abiding interest in the spirituality of art. In 1927 Arthur Lismer sponsored a small exhibit of Brooker’s works—widely considered the first solo exhibition of non-objective paintings in Canada. In 1929 Brooker met Manitoban artist Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald whose influence was a catalyst for Brooker’s now iconic style of geometric, abstracted landscapes. Not without controversy, in 1931 Brooker submitted a painting that was later removed from a gallery show before its exhibition because it contained nudity. He wrote the essay “Nudes and Prudes” in rebuke.