Walter Tandy Murch: The

Spirit of Things

The Confederation Centre Art Gallery presents a retrospective view of forty years of paintings by Walter Tandy Murch (1907-1967). The exhibit provides insight into the work of the Canadian-born artist whose formative training at the Ontario College of Art was during the first decade of the Group of Seven.

Murch moved to New York in 1926 where his work developed a distinct vision of time and place in conversation with the Canadian and American scene painting of the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning in the 1940s, Murch began painting still life compositions, taking cues from the history of painting in order to build a bridge to the modern age. In doing so, he generated a language of the times — the transition from the mechanical to the space and information age — but also considered a philosophical dimension and a spirit of things.

“Murch looked out into the world and artists of the past and present. He engaged the ideas of science and technology that was in the air, and found a way of expressing them without following prescriptions,” says Ihor Holubizky, exhibition co-curator.

The Spirit of Things focuses on Murch’s mature painting in the last twenty years of his life and career, and the traffic between his studio practice and commissioned work for books and magazines.

Walter Tandy Murch: The Spirit of Things is co-curated by Ihor Holubizky and Bill Jeffries and is circulated by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. It runs until January 17, 2010.