Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Ontario
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto

Literature:

Literature: Ken Carpenter, Canadian Art, “Otto Rogers and a Life in Art.” Online. 28 April 2014.

Note:

Painter and sculptor Otto Donald Rogers is one of Canada’s foremost contemporary practitioners of Color Field and cubist-constructivism. Born in Saskatchewan in 1935, it was not until he attended Saskatoon’s Teachers College that he decided to pursue a career in art. Rogers’ early works included still lifes, portraits, and landscapes - a huge contrast from the more spiritual abstract paintings he is now known for. “One of the defining features of Rogers’s art is its focus on layout, on the exact placement of forms,” Ken Carpenter explained in Rogers’ biography. “It is a preoccupation grounded in his observation that ‘in the face of infinity there is a struggle to place oneself on solid ground.’” Rogers’ darker palette set him apart from other Canadian abstract colourists of the time, demonstrating his fascination with light and art’s ability to present motion and stillness simultaneously, creating a temporary unity inside the painting.

Rogers graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in 1959 with both a BSc in Art Education and a MSc in Fine Art. He continued his affiliation with the university as a professor from 1959-1988, and was the chairman of the art department from 1973-1977. His work can be seen at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Spain, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as the National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery of Iceland.