Marianna Schmidt

Schmidt was born in Nagybecskerek, Hungary (later Yugoslavia) in 1918.[1][2]

Her early life was disrupted by war and the loss of her entire family. She spent years as a displaced person in Europe before arriving in Canada in 1953.[3][4] She graduated in Printmaking from the Vancouver School of Art in 1965. She Emigrated to Canada in the late fifties.

Having trained as a hospital laboratory technician, she worked in Vancouver from 1956 until her retirement in 1983 as well as maintaining her artistic career. Once retired, she devoted herself full-time to her art-making.

Schmidt's work is held in numerous Canadian public collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Burnaby Art Gallery,[5] the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the National Gallery of Canada, the Canada Council Art Bank, the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru, the Museum of Fine Arts, Caracas, Venezuela, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Seattle Art Museum,[6] and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium.[7]

Schmidt's artistic practice included painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage as well as "etching, lithography, computer art, plastic sculpture, and photography."[8]

At age 42, Schmidt entered the Vancouver School of Art (later Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, and now Emily Carr University)[9] where she studied from 1960 until 1965. Schmidt was the oldest in her class that included Ann Kipling, Richard Turner, Irene Whittome and Anna Wong. Influential instructors included Orville Fisher and Jack Shadbolt.

An early history of dislocation underpins Schmidt's work.[1] The tone of her work ranges from distraught and angst-ridden to whimsical. "[A]ll Schmidt's art manifests her paradoxical sense of whimsy and brutality, humour and despair, anxiety and fierce conviction."[10] She was "encouraged by postwar abstractionism surrealist juxtapositions and the general freeing up of aesthetic restraints."[9] In the later part of the 1960s, she focused on the expression of eccentric figuration. She moved from etching to lithography, screen printing and even a number of sculptures during the 1970s.[9]

She exhibited widely and received numerous accolades. Her printmaking was recognized internationally. In 1997 she was among 96 artists invited to participate in the 10th International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo.

Solo Exhibitions:

1965: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba

1968: New Design Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1969: Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Lima Peru

1969: Museode Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela

1970: Douglas Gallery, Vancouver British Columbia

1970: Retrospective, Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1978: Retrospective, Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1980: Drawings, University of British Columbia Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1980: Prints and Drawings. Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1982: Paintings. Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1983: Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1984: Bau-Xi Gallery, Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, British Columbia

1985: Marianna Schmidt. Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia

1990: Portraits of Reason: Figures from the Mind, duo exhibition with Bruce Hutton. Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, BC.

Group Exhibitions:

1964:

Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Alberta

1965:

36th International Print Show, Seattle, Washington

Canadian Watercolours and Prints, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

Beyond Regionalism, Fine Arts Gallery, University of  British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

1966:

Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers 50th Exhibition, Toronto, Ontario

Annual Exhibition of  B.C. Artists , Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Prints and Plastic Combines, The New Design Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

52nd Annual Exhibition of  North West Artists, Seattle, Washington

International Exhibition of Prints and Drawings, Lugano, Switzerland

Northwest Printmakers 37th International Exhibition, Seattle, Washington

1967:

Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers 51st Exhibition, Toronto, Ontario

Western Print Makers Travelling Exhibition, Fine Arts Gallery, University of  British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

Canadian Print Makers Exhibition, Expo '67, Montréal, Québec

Joy and Celebration, Fine Arts Gallery, University of  British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

53rd Annual Exhibition of North West Artists, Seattle, Washington

International Exhibition of Prints and Engravings, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia

Eleven Canadian Printmakers, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (travelling)

1968:

The 11th Annual Show, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Younger Vancouver Sculptors, The Fine Arts Gallery, University of British Columbia

Spectrum '68, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Younger Vancouver Cross Section 68, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

Directions in Western Canadian Printmaking, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Northwest Printmakers, 39th International Exhibition, Seattle, Washington

1969:

5th Burnaby Print Show, Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, British Columbia

II International Minibiennial Print Show, Stockholm, Sweden

Contemporary Canadian Prints and Drawings (travelling), Australia

Ist Biennial Print Show, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Ist British International Biennial, Bradford, England

1970:

New Trends in Graphics, Brno, Czech Republic

3rd International Print Show, Cracow, Poland

1975–1980:

1975: 10th International Print Show, Tokyo, Japan

1978: Women in Art, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

1979: 13th Biennale, Ljubjana, Yugoslavia

1979: B.C. Credit Union Exhibition, Vancouver, British Columbia

1980: Bau-Xi Gallery Anniversary Exhibition, Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1980: 5 Women Artists, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia

1980–1985:

1983: Growing Years, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia

1983: The October Show, Vancouver, British Columbia

1984: The Longstaffe Collection, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1984: 100 Years of Printing in British Columbia, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

1984: The Warehouse Show, Vancouver, British

1984: Drawings, The Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

1984: Contemporary West Coast Art, Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta

Affected by the environment that she grew up, the most persistence feeling in her art are those of the loneliness, alienation, and painful dislocation. Whether depicted in prints, drawing, painting or collages, her twisted, distorted and fragmented figures are often stranded against featureless grounds, huddled in inhospitable rooms or suspended above place maps and generic landscapes. Still, humor, irony, pathos, celebration, and a keen interest in the human circus also find expression in Marianna Schmidt's art.