Pillowscape

Ghitta Caiserman (1923 – 2005)
Ghitta Caiserman was a Canadian modernist painter whose impressive body of work reflects a strong social orientation and an expressionistic style initially developed during her studies at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Caiserman’s personal approach to painting encompassed subjects ranging from landscapes and studio interiors, to portraits and paintings of the human figure. Lingering between the realms of the representational and abstract, her subjects seem to be simultaneously understood yet uncertain. As one of her contemporaries wrote in the Northern Review, “the tensions she creates are human tensions, the emotive fragments of the abstractionist is the human emotion of the artist and her subject.”

A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, she was also active with the Jewish Painters of Montreal, who, during the 1940s were concerned with social issues and the struggles of working people. With Alfred Pinsky she founded the Montreal Artist School in 1947. Caiserman received the Centennial Medal in 1967 and was the first painter to be awarded the newly founded Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2000. In 2002, she served as vice-chair of the federal Commission on the Status of the Artist. Her works are held in major public galleries, museums and numerous private collections.