Guido molinari

Guido Molinari (October 12, 1933 - February 21, 2004) was a leading Canadian abstract painter. He was born in the city of Montreal, Quebec. His father was a musician with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and his mother was the daughter of a craftsman of religious figures. At the age of 13 he began to paint and at 16 he fell ill with tuberculosis, which forced him to rest and read the authors who would have an important influence on his creations: Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jean Piaget..

From 1948 Molinari took some courses at the Montreal School and Museum of Fine Arts. In 1951 he opened his own studio and devoted himself to experimenting with his creations, for example, painting his works blindfolded. In 1955, after becoming interested in an article about the abstract techniques used by Jackson Pollock, he decided to emigrate to New York City and upon his return to Montreal he began to define his own style, using only the colors white and black. During the 1960s his paintings basically consisted of combinations of vertical lines, but around 1970 he began to adopt other geometric shapes such as triangles and squares.

Throughout his life Molinari received various distinctions. In 1967 he received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, in 1971 he was awarded the Order of Canada and in 1980 he received Quebec's Paul-Émile-Borduas Prize. He spent his last years as a professor of art at Montreal's Concordia University, where he retired in 1997 after 27 years of service.

Guido Molinari was married in 1958 to Fernande Ste-Martin, a noted writer, journalist, and former director of the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. A son and a daughter were born from the marriage.