04/25/2026
Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald & Bertram Brooker: Watercolours & Drawings -- Opens May 2, 2026 from 1 - 6 pm
Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890-1956), along with contemporary Bertram Brooker (1888-1955), became two of the most innovative and experimental modernist painters Canada has ever produced. I've long admired FitzGerald's soft, textured approach to his landscapes and the way he embraced abstraction very late in his life. Quietly radical and deeply observant, FitzGerald helped redefine how Canadian artists saw their world: not only as picturesque scenes, but as structures of light, form, and feeling.
Drawn entirely from one extraordinary collection, Gallery Gevik is proud to present an exhibition of twenty-one (21) never-before-seen drawings and watercolours that trace FitzGerald's extraordinary evolution across his career, from the lyrical landscape sketches of the mid-1920s to the luminous abstractions created in the final years before his death. I must extend a special thank you to Michael Parke-Taylor, the curator and author of Into the Light: Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, for his invaluable expertise in identifying the time period and circumstances in which each of these works was completed.
In addition, we're pleased to offer a selection of works by FitzGerald's contemporary in modernism, Bertram Brooker. On a trip to Winnipeg in 1929, Brooker met and befriended LeMoine FitzGerald, whose figurative work immediately inspired him. As a result of their friendship, Brooker abruptly turned away from abstraction in favour of form and structure, moving to landscapes, realistic figure work, and later, still lifes.
This exhibition offers a rare window into each artist's continually refining vision and reveals the breadth of Fitzgerald’s and Brooker's achievement — not simply as painters of the Canadian landscape, but as two of the country’s most important interpreters of modern form. Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald & Bertram Brooker: Watercolours & Drawings opens Saturday May 2, 2026 from 1 - 6 pm and continues until May 20.
