Jack Bush

Jack Bush occupies a central position in the history of postwar Canadian abstraction. Although his early artistic formation included study with J.E.H. MacDonald of the Group of Seven, Bush ultimately moved beyond the conventions of landscape painting, pursuing an increasingly autonomous visual language grounded in colour, scale, and formal clarity.  As a member of Painters Eleven, he contributed to the emergence of abstract painting in Canada while engaging with the innovations of American Abstract Expressionism. The encouragement of critic Clement Greenberg proved especially significant, prompting Bush to simplify his compositions and intensify his attention to the expressive capacity of colour.