Jean McEwen

Jean Albert McEwen (December 14, 1923 – January 9, 1999) was a Canadian painter known for his lyrical abstraction.

Early life McEwen was born in 1923 Montreal to a Scottish father and French-Canadian mother. He began his working life as a pharmacist, having received a degree in pharmacy from the University of Montreal in 1947.

Art career McEwen was self-taught as a painter. The first exhibition of his work was in the 1949 Annual Spring Exhibition, a group show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Following the positive reception of his work as a painter in Montreal, he quit his job as a pharmacist and left Montreal for Paris, encouraged to meet Jean-Paul Riopelle. In 1961, McEwen received the Hadassah prize and first prize at the Concours artistiques de la province de Québec, as well as a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. In the same year, he also had his first solo show at Gallery Moos, in Toronto, and Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, acquired one of his paintings for the Museum of Modern Art, which contributed to his reputation among the vanguard of Canadian artists. From 1982 to 1994, he was professor at Concordia University. In 1998, he received the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas from the Government of Quebec. In 1987, McEwen's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In 1990, his work was shown with that of John Fox by Heffel Gallery, Vancouver. A second commemorative exhibition titled Untamed Colour: Celebrating Jean McEwen was held there in 2019 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death.

Collections His work is included in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, PQ; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, In 1967, he completed a mural for Place des Arts in Montreal.