Joyce Wieland @ MMFA
“Joyce Wieland: Heart On” is now open at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art.
The career retrospective (her first in nearly 40 years) includes over 100 artworks spanning five decades. A groundbreaking artist, Wieland experimented with painting, film, drawing and craft-based techniques, exploring ideas of feminism, nationalism, social equity and ecology through her artworks.
Part of the exhibit focuses on the 9 years that Wieland lived in New York between 1962-1971, a crucial decade in her career where she established her reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker, producing paintings, assemblages and textiles. The paintings, in particular, she called “filmic paintings” which were influenced by images from daily life and were composed like filmstrips or storyboards.
Our 1963 painting “Numbers” was painted during this time in New York and follows the story-board format where a jumble of numbers are structured in a loose grid. Her bright, bold colours and heart and star forms are influenced by the Pop-art movement of the day. A speech balloon, also legitimized through Pop-art, contains a quote by Michael Snow: “…This is a more romantic painting than some of the others…”
Co-organized with the Art Gallery of Ontario, this exhibition benefits from a close collaboration with Cinémathèque québécoise on Wieland’s films, as well as with the National Gallery of Canada, which has generously loaned a significant number of the artist’s major works.
Travelling to the AGO, opening June 21, 2025.
More information about the exhibition HERE