Joseph Drapell (born March 13, 1940) is a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

abstract painter.

Early life

Drapell was born in

Humpolec Humpolec (; german: Humpoletz) is a town in Pelhřimov District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 11,000 inhabitants. Administrative parts Villages of Brunka, Hněvkovice, Kletečná, Krasoňov, Lhotka, Petrovice, Pla� ...

, Czechoslovakia, and emigrated to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

in 1966. From 1968-1970 he studied at the

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of C ...

Bloomfield Hills Bloomfield Hills is a small city (5.04 sq. miles) in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a northern suburb of Metro Detroit and is approximately northwest of Downtown Detroit. Except a small southern border with the city of Bir ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. At the Cranbrook Academy he met visiting Canadian artist

Jack Bush John Hamilton Bush (March 20, 1909 – January 24, 1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Ma ...

and the American art critic

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

. Bush influenced his work by telling him to pay more attention to intuition. He moved permanently to

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

in 1970 and during the period from 1972 through 1974, in Toronto, he developed a technique of applying paint with a broad spreading device attached to a movable support having also been influenced by the American painter

Morris Louis Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D. ...

Career

Drapell began his formal career as an artist when he was 28 and has participated in numerous exhibitions. In 1968 Drapell designed and built a public sculpture titled ''Life'' in Halifax. He is a Canadian/Czech artist from two generations after the

Painters Eleven Painters Eleven (also known as Painters 11 or P11) was a group of abstract artists active in Canada between 1953 and 1960. They are associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. History Since the 1920s, artists in English Canada had been h ...

but does not see any connection to that group as well as a founding member of the New New Painters, a group that has exhibited together internationally since the 1990s. The core of this group is from the United States: it has two Canadian members: Drapell and Graham Peacock from Edmonton. Drapell and his wife, the poet Anna Maclachlan, founded the first Museum of New New Painting in 1998 devoted to exhibiting New New art. One writer calls it everything meretriculous and impure, but admits Drapell can produce impressive effects, often based on a Georgian Bay retreat bought in 1971. Drapell is also a member of the

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) is a Canadian arts-related organization that was founded in 1880. History 1880 to 1890 The title of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was received from Queen Victoria on 16 July 1880. The Governor General ...

References

External links

official website.

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Drapell, Joseph 1940 births Living people People from Humpolec Czechoslovak emigrants to Canada 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Czech male painters Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts 21st-century Canadian painters 20th-century Canadian male artists 21st-century Canadian male artists Canadian abstract artists