Tom Thomson

Tom Thomson
Life & Work by David P. Silcox
Pointillism
A painting technique developed in 1886 by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac as an
offshoot of Impressionism. In this style, rather than broken brushstrokes, artists used
thousands of small dots of intense and complementary colours that coalesced to make
their images. In this way they developed an understanding of how the human eye works
and the reality of light as a spectrum of colour.
Pollock, Jackson (American, 1912–1956)
Leader of the Abstract Expressionist movement, best known for his drip paintings of the
1940s and 1950s. Pollock is also closely associated with action painting, in which the
act of painting is gestural and the artist approaches the canvas with little notion of what
he or she will create.
Rous and Mann Limited
A Toronto printing firm founded in 1909. In 1912 Albert Robson became director of its
art department, and his loyal staff from the rival Grip Limited followed him there. They
included Tom Thomson and several members of the future Group of Seven: Arthur
Lismer, Franklin Carmichael, Frank Johnston, F.H. Varley, and, later, Alfred Casson.
Seurat, Georges (French, 1859–1891)
An influential painter, Seurat was a pioneer of the Neo-Impressionist movement,
departing from Impressionism’s relative spontaneity and practising more formal
structure and symbolic content. Along with Paul Signac, he developed Pointillism, a
technique adopted by other painters such as Camille Pissarro, Piet Mondrian, and
Wassily Kandinsky.
Suprematism
A movement developed about 1915 by the Russian artist and writer Kazimir Malevich,
who proclaimed it finished before 1920. Characterized by radical austerity of form and
geometric abstraction, Suprematism had a powerful influence on European and
American art and design of the twentieth century.
Surrealism
An early twentieth-century literary and artistic movement that began in Paris. Surrealism
aimed to express the workings of the unconscious, free of convention and reason, and
was characterized by fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions. The movement
spread globally, influencing film, theatre, and music.
Town, Harold (Canadian, 1924–1990)
Town was a founding member of Painters Eleven and a leader in Toronto’s art scene in
the 1950s and 1960s. An internationally recognized abstract artist, he created paintings,
collages, sculptures, and prints with brilliant effect and developed a unique form of
monotype, “single autographic prints.” (See Harold Town: Life & Work by Gerta Moray.)
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