William Perehudoff

William Perehudoff (April 21, 1918 – February 26, 2013) was a Canadian artist closely associated with colour field painting. He was married to the landscape painter Dorothy Knowles.

Life and career

Perehudoff was born in St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on April 21, 1918, and was raised on a farm in the Doukhobor community of Bogdanovka, between the towns of Langham and Borden, Saskatchewan. His formal education ended at grade eleven, It was at a workshop in 1962 that he met New York art critic Clement Greenberg,

Perehudoff's work has been represented in numerous public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Remai Modern in Saskatoon, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. and in 1999, he was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada. He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Due to failing eyesight, Perehudoff gave up painting around 2003–2004.

In November 2009, several of Perehudoff's murals were successfully removed from the executive suite in the former Intercontinental Packers plant. Perehudoff painted them in 1950, and the abstract silhouettes are considered the last remaining examples of purist cubist art from that period. Appraised at $250,000, the murals had been at risk as the plant was slated for demolition. Ian Hodkinson, a retired art conservator, was brought in and used a special method to remove the acrylic paint from the plaster intact. The murals remained in storage until the Remai Modern was completed in 2017. They are now displayed in a special antechamber, built to the same dimensions as the boardroom in which they first existed. In 2010, a travelling retrospective titled The Optimism of Colour: William Perehudoff was curated by Karen Wilkin for Saskatoon’s Mendel Art Gallery.

Perehudoff died on February 26, 2013, at age 94.