Guido Molinari was born in Montreal in 1933, where he took only a few courses at the École des beaux-arts and the École du Musée des beaux-arts, between 1948 and 1951. In 1953, he held his first solo exhibition at L’Échourie and, three years later, exhibited in the United States for the first time. This self-taught artist was soon considered the master of abstract painting in Canada.
In 1965, he was present at The Responsive Eye, the major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before representing Canada at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968, where he won the major prize of the David E. Bright Foundation. In 1976, the National Gallery of Canada organized a major retrospective of his work, and took the opportunity to publish a volume of his “writings on art”. In 1980, he was the youngest winner of the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas. In 1995, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal devoted a final retrospective to his work. Guido Molinari died in Montreal in February 2004.
Chronology
Below, find an exhaustive chronology of the artist’s life, compiled for the book Molinari, available for sale at the Foundation.
