Ontario institute of painters

DEFINITION

The Ontario Institute of Painters [Canada] was devoted to the exhibition of non-abstract artists. It was formed in 1958 by traditional/representational artists, and their supporters who were disgruntled with the Ontario Society of Artists (see glossary) and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (see glossary) accommodation of abstract art. The OIP founders included Kenneth Forbes, Archibald Barnes, Manly MacDonald, Robert Allan Barr (see all previous in AskART), Gordon Conn (collector) and Samuel Weir (collector). Perhaps their most famous exhibition was ???Points of View???, Museum London, Ontario in 1959. Then the works of 10 OIP members were hung with those of the abstractionist group Painters Eleven (see glossary) and figurative abstractionists like York Wilson (see AskART). The point of the show was to illustrate the conservative, experimental and intermediate trends in painting. Submitted by M.D. Silverbrooke, West Vancouver, British Columbia. Sources: ???The Consummate Canadian: A Biography of Samuel Edward Weir, Q.C.??? (1990), by Mary Willan Mason; ???Art and Architecture in Canada??? (1991), by Loren R. Lerner and Mary F. Williamson; and the Art Gallery of Ontario ???http://www.ago.net/assets/files/pdf/special_collections/SC016.pdf