| From The Publisher* | While serving as a Canadian war artist in Europe during the Second World War, Alex Colville (1920–2013) was immersed in the overwhelming nihilism and horror of the period, witness to the enactment of humanity's darkest possibilities. Colville's war-time experience ultimately animated his remarkable painting career. The style of representational painting he developed–where realism is heightened by the artist's assertion of order through composition–expresses the tenets of his personal revolt against chaos and despair; if these prospects lurk in even his most intimate, domestic images, so also do order and hope, charging Colville's art with tension and vitality. |
