William KurelekLife & Work

“William Kurelek was an artist of extremes. As no Canadian artist before him or since, Kurelek attracted, through his at once sentimental and monstrous imagery, the attention of both popular audiences and seasoned critics.”

– Andrew Kear

One of Kurelek’s most famous paintings, The Maze, provides a privileged glimpse “inside my skull,” as put by the artist, who struggled throughout his life with depression and schizophrenia. A dark, hypnotically dense composition in gouache, the work shows Kurelek’s personal, religious, and cultural concerns in tiny, impossibly detailed vignettes crammed into dollhouse-like rooms inside a structure resembling a bisected cranium. In a strikingly literal sense, the painting urges viewers to go inside the mind of this troubled, brilliant soul. With William Kurelek: Life & Work, Andrew Kear demonstrates why, more than a quarter-century after Kurelek’s death, Kurelek’s work stands as an enduring commentary on multiculturalism and mental illness in Canada.

Copyright Information

Banner Image: William Kurelek, The Ukrainian Pioneer, No. 5, 1971, 1976. Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, transfer from the House of Commons of the Parliament of Canada, 1990 (30836.5). © Estate of William Kurelek, courtesy of the Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto. Photo credit: National Gallery of Canada.