Gerta Moray

Gerta Moray (born 16 April 1940) is a Canadian art historian, educator and writer. Her career has spanned five decades. She is best known for her substantial book and writings on Emily Carr.

Early years and career Moray was born in Krnov, Czechoslovakia, and emigrated to England. She studied in France, receiving a diploma from the Institute of Language and French Culture in Lyon. In England, she received a M.A. from Oxford University, and a Postgraduate Diploma from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and elsewhere. She returned to Canada in 1981 and in 1889 began to teach at the School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM) of the University of Guelph. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Toronto (1993) and most notably Emily Carr. which is said to have respectfully responded to aboriginal memories and perspectives as well as to race relations and the colonial and patriarchal history of British Columbia and Canada. by peers such as the curators and writers on Carr such as Charles C. Hill and Ian M. Thom and the general public alike. and books such as Beyond Wilderness : The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity and Contemporary Art (2007). In the textbook The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century (2010), she wrote the chapter on "Emily Carr, Modernism, Cultural Identity, and Ethnocultural Art History". she wrote the chapter on "Emily Carr and the visionary British Columbia landscape". In Canada and Impressionism: new horizons, 1880-1930 (2019), she wrote the chapter on "Painting Canada: from Impressionism to Modernism". Here, she focused upon the groundwork of modernism in Canada and how a following generation of artists, among them Carr, would take up new possibilities. She found such possibilities to be expressed in the "modernist anti-modernism" attitudes of the Group of Seven.

Besides her writing on Carr, she has written an e-book on Harold Town: life & work. Moray continues to write and lecture in connection with modern and contemporary art, and Canadian art.