William Perehudoff (April 21, 1918 – February 26, 2013) was a

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 ...

artist closely associated with colour field painting. He was married to the landscape painter

Dorothy Knowles Dorothy Elsie Knowles, (born April 6, 1927) is a Canadian artist, most notable for her landscape paintings. She is the widow of William Perehudoff, a fellow artist who is closely associated with the Color Field movement. Career Knowles studie ...

Life and career

Perehudoff was born in St. Paul's Hospital in

Saskatoon 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 ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...

on April 21, 1918, and was raised on a farm in the

Doukhobor The Doukhobours or Dukhobors (russian: духоборы / духоборцы, dukhobory / dukhobortsy; ) are a Spiritual Christian ethnoreligious group of Russian origin. They are one of many non-Orthodox ethno-confessional faiths in Russia a ...

community of Bogdanovka
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, between the towns of Langham and

Borden, Saskatchewan Borden ( 2016 population: ) is a village in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan within the Rural Municipality of Great Bend No. 405 and Census Division No. 16. Borden is named after Sir Frederick William Borden, Minister of Militia in the L ...

. His formal education ended at grade eleven, but he pursued art studies with French artist Jean Chariot at the

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (FAC) is an arts center located just north of downtown Colorado Springs, Colorado. Located on the same city block are the American Numismatic Association and part of the campus of Colorado ...

, Colorado (1948–49), with

Amédée Ozenfant Amédée Ozenfant (15 April 1886 – 4 May 1966) was a French cubist Painting, painter and writer. Together with Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (later known as Le Corbusier) he founded the Purism (arts), Purist movement. Education Ozenfant wa ...

at the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts, New York, New York (1949–50) and through the Emma Lake Artist's Workshops (various years, 1957 to 1990), where he became acquainted with teachers

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American painter. He was one of the best-known American color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was though ...

and

Jules Olitski Jevel Demikovski (March 27, 1922 – February 4, 2007), known professionally as Jules Olitski, was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Early life Olitski was born Jevel Demikovsky in Snovsk, in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( ...

. It was at one of these workshops in 1962 that he met New York 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 ...

, who introduced him to

Post-painterly Abstraction Post-painterly abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, which subsequently travelled to the Walker Art Center and the Art Gallery of Toront ...

, which had an enormous impact upon his art and career. Perehudoff became acquainted with

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 ...

at the suggestion of

in the mid 1960s. He regularly visited Bush thereafter and felt an affinity for the way Bush worked in commercial art to support his family, as did Perehudoff. Perehudoff's work has been represented in numerous public and private collections, including the

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 ...

Remai Modern Remai Modern is a public art museum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The art museum is situated along the west bank of the South Saskatchewan River, at the River Landing development in Saskatoon's Central Business District. The museum's build ...

in Saskatoon, the Canada Council Art Bank, the

Glenbow Museum The Glenbow Museum is an art and history regional museum in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The museum focuses on Western Canadian history and culture, including Indigenous perspectives. The Glenbow was established as a private non-profi ...

in Calgary, the

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 ...

, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. In 1994, he was awarded the

Saskatchewan Order of Merit The Saskatchewan Order of Merit (french: Ordre du Mérite de la Saskatchewan) is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Instituted in 1985 by Lieutenant Governor Frederick Johnson, on the advice of the Cabinet u ...

, and in 1999, he was inducted as a Member of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the cen ...

. He was made 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 ...

. Due to failing eyesight, Perehudoff gave up painting around 2003-2004. In November 2009, several of Perehudoff's murals were successfully removed from the executive suite in the former Intercontinental Packers plant. Perehudoff painted them in 1950, and the abstract silhouettes are considered the last remaining examples of

purist Purism is an arts movement that took place between 1918 and 1925. Purism may also refer to: *Purism (Spanish architecture) (1530–1560), a phase of Renaissance architecture in Spain *Purism (company) Purism, SPC is an American computer techn ...

cubist Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

art from that period. Appraised at $250,000, the murals had been at risk as the plant was slated for demolition. Ian Hodkinson, a retired art conservator, was brought in and used a special method to remove the acrylic paint from the plaster intact. The murals remained in storage until the

was completed in 2017. They are now displayed in a special antechamber, built to the same dimensions as the boardroom in which they first existed. In 2010, a travelling retrospective titled ''The Optimism of Colour: William Perehudoff'' was curated by Karen Wilkin for Saskatoon’s

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 ...

. Perehudoff died on February 26, 2013 at age 94.

References

External links

University of Regina news release

Winchester Galleries - works by Perehudoff from the 1980s and 1990s

Mendel's Murals
- blog describing the removal of Perehudoff murals
Obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perehudoff, William 1918 births 2013 deaths Officers of the Order of Canada 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters 21st-century Canadian painters Members of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Artists from Saskatoon 20th-century Canadian male artists 21st-century Canadian male artists