Andréi Nakov

Beginning in 1914 in Russia, a group of artists primed for experimentation introduced an entirely new direction for the visual arts, articulating the language of abstraction with Suprematism and Constructivism. This catalogue centers on the emergence of the Russian avant-garde movement in Moscow until the mid-1920s. Works by El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, Ilya Chashnik, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova and Ivan Kliun are featured. Also included is a rich selection of books, manuscripts, drawings and prints, reminding us that, for many Russians in the early twentieth century, art was a part of everyday life.

Paperback | 168 pages
Publication Date: 2016

Edited by Réjean Legault with contributions by Susanna Caccia Gherardini, Karen Colby-Stothart, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Serena Maffioletti, Cammie McAtee, Franco Panzini, and Andrea Pertoldeo.

This richly illustrated book offers a detailed account of the history and evolution of the Canada Pavilion, built in 1958 in the gardens of the Venice Biennale.

Complete with reproductions of archival material including photographs, drawings, and maps, along with a portfolio from contemporary photographers, this commemorative publication includes essays on: the cultural and political context in which the Canada Pavilion committee worked; the concept and construction of the building and the links with architect Enrico Peressutti and the BBPR partnership; the Pavilion’s role in the postwar Italian cultural context and its fortunes from its inauguration in 1958 to the restoration in 2018; the restoration project itself, and finally, the relationship between the Pavilion and the Biennale Gardens.

Following the roles of key players involved in the design and construction of the building, to its multifaceted use over the past sixty years in exhibiting the work of some of Canada’s most talented artists and architects, The Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale illuminates the Pavilion’s great importance in the context of modern architecture, art and culture, and international political diplomacy.

Hardcover | 192 pages
24 x 28 cm (9.4 x 11 in.)
Publication Date: 2020

Erika Dolphin
with Jonathan L. Meakins

The Collectors’ Cosmos: The Meakins–McClaran Print Collection provides a glimpse into the making of what is, undoubtedly, the foremost private collection of 16th and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish prints in Canada. While that is the strength of the collection, there is also a joyful touch of eclecticism reflecting the Renaissance interests of the collectors Dr. Jonathan Meakins and Dr. Jacqueline McClaran.

In this beautiful and fully illustrated catalogue, Dr. Meakins takes us through the collection’s history, which began forty years ago in Paris following an afternoon in a room full of prints by Camille Pissarro at the Grand Palais. He reflects upon how a collection is never static; it ebbs and flows much like life. The other essay by Erika Dolphin, a personal account of her exploration of the collection, examines the flourishing of images of landscape in northern Europe and illustrates how art in the form of a humble print can lead us to reflect upon the myriad wonders of life.

Softcover | 216 pages
24.5 x 30 cm (9.6 x 11.8 in.)
Publication Date: 2021

Ann Thomas and John McElhone

This lavish publication celebrates fifty years of collecting photographs at the National Gallery of Canada. When the NGC began acquiring photos in 1967, few museums viewed the medium as fine art. Thanks to the passion and dedication of early supporters, a comprehensive collection has taken shape over the past half century. Drawn from one of the world’s most significant photographs holdings, The Extended Moment highlights the collection’s rich diversity, chronicling its formative years and exploring how the technical photographic process has evolved.

Hardcover | 336 pages 
23 x 29 cm (9 x 11.4 in.)
Publication Date: 2018

Winning Title (Pictorial), The Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, 2018

Ann Thomas

The National Gallery of Canada marks the centennial of the beginning of the First World War with the exhibitionThe Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography. Although photography was already being used to document armed conflict, the First World War marked a turning point for this medium. Alongside political and military uses of photography, the personal use of cameras by soldiers emerged as a new phenomenon, while studio portraits and personal albums illustrate the major role played by photography in private life. As a whole, these visual records offer an intimate, authentic and comprehensive view of the everyday realities of war.

Hardcover | 140 pages
Bilingual
28.5 x 28.6 cm (11 ¼ x 11 ¼ in.)
Publication Date: 2014

This switch plate features a detail from Tom Thomson's painting The Jack Pine (1916-17) in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Made for single gang toggle switch
11.43 x 6.98 cm (4.5 x 2.75 in)

This switch plate features a detail from Tom Thomson's painting The Pool (1915) in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Made for single gang toggle switch
11.43 x 6.98 cm (4.5 x 2.75 in)

This switch plate features a detail from J.E.H. MacDonald painting The Tangled Garden (1916) in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Made for single gang toggle switch
11.43 x 6.98 cm (4.5 x 2.75 in)

Alex Colville (1920-2013)
To Prince Edward Island, 1965

Colville is one of Atlantic Canada’s most celebrated artists. It always seems as if something is just about to happen in his paintings. For each outward sign of calm, there is a corresponding suggestion of looming danger.

9 x 6.5 cm (3.5 x 2.5 in.)

In the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Alex Colville (1920-2013)
To Prince Edward Island, 1965

Colville is one of Atlantic Canada’s most celebrated artists. It always seems as if something is just about to happen in his paintings. For each outward sign of calm, there is a corresponding suggestion of looming danger.

Card dimensions: 17.5 x 13.5 cm (6.8 x 5.3 in.)
Blank inside. Envelope included.

In the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Charles C. Hill, Dennis Reid

A fresh and imaginative reinterpretation of the work, life and, perhaps most intriguingly, times of the iconic Canadian artist Tom Thomson, this book is written by eight experts whose different perspectives contribute to a new understanding of Thomson's work.

Hardcover | 386 pages
Publication Date: 2002
Available in French only

Cornelia Homburg, Anabelle Kienle
Joseph J. Rishel, Jennifer A. Thompson

Vincent van Gogh’s profound love of nature has often been taken for granted but has rarely been studied in detail. While he has long been admired for his dazzling use of intense colour and expressive brushwork, it is his innovative representation of nature that makes him a truly modern artist and is the focus of Van Gogh: Up Close. This exhibition, which has been organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, concentrates on Van Gogh’s French period, from 1886 to 1890, and highlights how he conveyed his intense response to the natural world – whether this was a landscape, a still life, or the rendering of a single blade of grass – through a number of different, and often radical compositional strategies.

Softcover | 290 pages
Publication Date: 2012

Cornelia Homburg, Anabelle Kienle
Joseph J. Rishel, Jennifer A. Thompson

Vincent van Gogh’s profound love of nature has often been taken for granted but has rarely been studied in detail. While he has long been admired for his dazzling use of intense colour and expressive brushwork, it is his innovative representation of nature that makes him a truly modern artist and is the focus of Van Gogh: Up Close. This exhibition, which has been organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, concentrates on Van Gogh’s French period, from 1886 to 1890, and highlights how he conveyed his intense response to the natural world – whether this was a landscape, a still life, or the rendering of a single blade of grass – through a number of different, and often radical compositional strategies.

Softcover | 290 pages
Publication Date: 2012

Brian Jungen (b. 1970)
Vienna, 2003

Jungen is renowned for repurposing objects from contemporary culture to reflect Indigenous concerns. Meant to resemble the skeleton of a whale, an endangered animal considered by many Indigenous peoples to be of great spiritual power, Vienna is constructed out of inexpensive patio chairs made of plastic, an indestructible material.

9 x 6.5 cm (3.5 x 2.5 in.)

In the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Brian Jungen (b. 1970)
Vienna, 2003

Jungen is renowned for repurposing objects from contemporary culture to reflect Indigenous concerns. Meant to resemble the skeleton of a whale, an endangered animal considered by many Indigenous peoples to be of great spiritual power, Vienna is constructed out of inexpensive patio chairs made of plastic, an indestructible material.

Card dimensions: 17.5 x 13.5 cm (6.8 x 5.3 in.)
Blank inside. Envelope included.

In the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Clarence Gagnon (1881-1942)
Village in the Laurentian Mountains, 1925

Gagnon is best known for his rural Quebec landscape paintings. Although he trained and maintained a studio in Paris for much of his career, he never lost his love of the Laurentians and the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec, which inspired many of his paintings.

9 x 6.5 cm (3.5 x 2.5 in.)

In the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

This switch plate features a detail from Claude Monet's painting Waterloo Bridge: Effect of Sunlight in the Fog (1903) in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Made for single gang toggle switch
11.43 x 6.98 cm (4.5 x 2.75 in)

Lynne Cooke

This transformative exhibition explores how abstract art and woven textiles have intertwined over the past hundred years.

In the 20th century, textiles were often considered lesser – as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. Woven Histories challenges the hierarchies that have separated textiles from fine arts. Putting into dialogue some 130 works by more than 45 creators from across generations and continents, the exhibition explores the contributions weaving and related techniques have made to abstraction, modernism’s pre-eminent art form.

See a variety of textile techniques including weaving, knitting, netting, knotting and felting. Learn about the wide-ranging reasons artists from Anni Albers to Rosemarie Trockel and Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee Nation) have engaged with this art form. Some seek to effect social change; others address political issues. Engaging with textiles as subject, material and technique, still others revitalize abstraction’s formal conventions or critique its patriarchal history and gendered identity.

Follow this hidden thread of art history to discover the work of creators who were once marginalized for their gender, race or class.

Hardcover
24 x 28 cm (9.5 x 11 in.)
Publication date: 2024

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.