Born: 1909-02-04 | Died: 1998-11-22
Jack Shadbolt was a British-born Canadian painter and educator whose work was strongly influenced by Picasso and primitivism, the European Surrealists (particularly Joan Miro) and the American Abstract Expressionist movement.
While his early works were grounded in inspiration from Emily Carr, the American Social Realists and the Mexican muralists (as well as the west coast landscape near his adopted home in Vancouver), Shadbolt developed a distinctive biomorphic Surrealism by way of a stint in New York in 1948-49. A teacher at the Vancouver School of Art from 1938 until his retirement in 1966, he received honourary LLD’s from Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria and the Order of Canada in 1972. He founded VIVA (the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts) together with his wife in 1988.