Art for War and Peace: How a Great Public Art Project Helped Canada Discover Itself

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Description

The Sampson-Matthews print program was once the largest public art project in Canadian history. Launched originally of the Second World War, it lasted 22 years and cost tens of millions of dollars. The exquisite, oversize silkscreens were based on designs by a who’s who of Canada’s greatest artists, including David Milne, Emily Carr, B.C. Binning, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson, Tom Thomson, J.W. Morrice and Clarence Gagnon.

The concept that launched the project was once simple. Get Canada’s best painters to give a contribution to the war effort by creating new works, guided by the National Gallery. Toronto printer Sampson-Matthews would turn these into high-quality silkscreens, which would then be sent to each military unit and government place of business from Britain to Ceylon. At the same time, target the home front: schools, libraries, banks, insurance companies. By 1943, the prints were hanging in Eaton’s store windows from coast to coast. The images were so popular that the program went into overdrive after the war. Dozens more works of art were commissioned and tens of thousands more printed. Sets toured america, Soviet Russia, war-torn Europe; the Bank of Montreal put them in each branch. The grand landscapes became familiar backdrops for two generations of Canadians.

The program was once a grandiose exercise in art education, a coming together of culture, commerce and patriotism that only a world war could ever create. Watch the film Argo and you’ll see two prints in the Tehran embassy scenes, benevolent totems assuring the plotters that the whole lot will be alright; this is Canada, chill out.

Art for War and Peace tells the story of the Sampson-Matthews prints, with full-colour reproductions of 112 silkscreens and contributions from several art writers, including Douglas Coupland.

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