Mashel Teitelbaum (1921–1985) (variant name Mashel Alexander Teitelbaum) was a Canadian painter, born in

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Yellowhead Highway, and has served as th ...

in 1921. He was the father of museum director

Matthew Teitelbaum Matthew D. Teitelbaum (born February 13, 1956) is a Canadian art historian, who is currently the director of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Early life and education Born in Toronto, Ontario, Teitelbaum is the third child and on ...

Career

At first, self-taught but studied from 1950-1951 at the California School of Fine Arts with

Clyfford Still Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately follow ...

and at Mills College with

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s ...

(1951). He then lived in Montreal, then Toronto, where he worked as a set designer for CBC Television and served as art critic for the ''Toronto Telegram'' for over a decade (1954-1959). He then studied art in Europe (1959), and taught at the School of Fine Arts at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.

Art work

At first, Teitelbaum painted his own form of portraits featuring expressionism, then landscapes of various regions in Canada. His style became increasingly abstract throughout his years of painting, going through many changes, among them single Zen-like improvised gestures on unprimed canvas. By 1967, he critiqued modern art, then in 1973, he made paint skin constructions, of acrylic paint peeled away when dry from polyethylene sheets to make collages. He then turned to painting exuberant landscapes. That he turned from abstraction to representation in some ways resembled that of other artists of his generation such as Duncan de Kergommeaux who also turned away from abstraction to make landscape.

Selected exhibitions

* 2004:

MacLaren Art Centre The MacLaren Art Centre is an art gallery and museum, located in Barrie, Ontario, 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 in ...

, Barrie, Ontario: ''Abstract Innovations: Mashel Teitelbaum'' * 1991:

Mendel Art Gallery The Mendel Art Gallery was a major creative cultural centre in City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Operating from 1964 to 2015, it housed a permanent collection of more than 7,500 works of art. The gallery was managed by the city-owned Saskatoon G ...

, Saskatoon, ''From Regionalism to Abstraction: Mashel Teitelbaum and Saskatchewan Art in the 1940s'' * 1946: Saskatoon Art Centre, Saskatoon (with William Perehudoff)

Selected collections

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...

, Toronto *

Art Gallery of Peterborough The Art Gallery of Peterborough is a free admission, non-profit public art gallery in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. A registered charity that depends on the support of its members, it was founded in 1974 by an independent board of volunteers. In ...

* Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal *

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...

, Ottawa *

MacKenzie Art Gallery The MacKenzie Art Gallery (MAG; french: Musee d’art MacKenzie) is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds e ...

, Regina *

, Saskatoon *

Robert McLaughlin Gallery The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest public art gallery in the Regional Municipality of Durham, of which Oshawa is a part. The gallery houses a significant collection of Canadian conte ...

, Oshawa * Vancouver Art Gallery He taught at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba. Mashel Teitelbaum died in Toronto, Toronto, Ontario in 1985.

Personal life

Mashel Teitelbaum was described as a "brilliant but mercurial" artist, afflicted by bipolar disorder by the ''Toronto Star'' in 2009.

References

Additional sources

* Fulford, Robert. ''Revolutions of the Soul: Mashel Teitelbaum in Canadian Painting'' * Fulford, Robert & Donald Kuspit. ''Mashel Teitelbaum: A Retrospective''. Hamilton: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1992. * Teitelbaum, Matthew et al. ''From Regionalism to Abstraction: Mashel Teitelbaum & Saskatchewan Art in the 1940s''. 1991.

External links

National Gallery of Canada
(Mashel Teitelbaum) {{DEFAULTSORT:Teitelbaum, Mashel 1921 births 1985 deaths 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Jewish Canadian artists Jewish painters Artists from Saskatoon Canadian abstract artists 20th-century Canadian male artists Canadian collage artists 20th-century Canadian Jews