Marianna Schmidt

Marianna Schmidt (1918-2005) was an accomplished neo-expressionist artist who, after having fled Hungary during the war and living in displaced persons camps throughout Europe, lived and worked in Vancouver from the 1950s until her death. The enormous scope of her practice - prints, drawings, paintings and collages - is unified by recurrent themes of alienation and dislocation, with twisted and fragmented figures stranded against featureless grounds and generic landscapes. This first retrospective monograph accompanies three concurrent exhibitions and is the result of a concerted effort on the part of the Evergreen Cultural Centre, Simon Fraser University Art Gallery and Burnaby Art Gallery. Works from public and private collections are augmented by pieces from Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Museum for Contemporary Art) in Ghent, Belgium which has extensive holdings. Three essays, a biography and a bibliography honour a singular career, placing it within the context of Schmidt's life and times