John A. Schweitzer
Canadian artist / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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John A. Schweitzer RCA is a Canadian artist known for mixed-media collage incorporating text. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, first place at the international exhibition Schrift und Bild in der modernen Kunst in 2004, and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from The University of Western Ontario in 2011. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2003[1] and to the Ontario Society of Artists (OAS) in 2006.[2] His work is found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa ON), Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau QC), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto ON), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Quebec QC), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Glenbow Museum (Calgary AB), Winnipeg Art Gallery, Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton NB), The Rooms Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John's NL), and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum (New York NY).
Schweitzer explored painting, sculpture, photography, installation and performance art but adopted collage as his primary medium by 1991.[3] His work references literature, art and architecture through a "plethora of coloured paper, torn posters, newspaper fragments, envelopes, stickers, postage stamps, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, straw, bits of metal, shards of pottery and other objets trouvés."[4] Organized in thematic series, Schweitzer's subject matter ranges from Virgil's Aeneid in Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (1991) to 9/11 terrorism in Fresh Kills: XXIV Elegies (2003).[5] Inspired by abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell and writers from T.S. Eliot to Proust or Goethe,[6] Schweitzer incorporates ephemera to "instill or arouse... an intellectual curiosity... as well as sharpen and heighten visual literacy."[7] Art critic John K. Grande described his work as "subtly enigmatic, these autobiographical, wry and witty narratives allude to history, time, life."[8]