Gershon Iskowitz
Gershon Iskowitz was a Canadian artist of Jewish background originally from Poland. Iskowitz was a Holocaust survivor of the Kielce Ghetto, who was liberated at Buchenwald. The circumstances of his early life—the trauma of the Holocaust and the uncertainty of the immediate postwar period, followed by immigration and adaptation to Canada—provide a lens through which to understand and appreciate his work. His early figurative images represent his tragic observed and remembered experiences while his later luminous abstract works represent his own unique vision of the world. Iskowitz's work does not easily fit into contemporary schools and movements, but it has been characterized as hard-edge, minimalist, abstract expressionist, and action painting.
Early life
Iskowitz was born in Kielce, in the Second Polish Republic. His father was Shmiel Yankl, generally referred to as Jankel; his mother was Zisla Lewis. Gershon was the third of four children; he had two brothers, Itchen and Yosl, and a younger sister, Devorah. At the age of four he was sent to the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva. He became bored and began drawing. After a year and a half he begged his father to be allowed to return home and was given permission to do so. He was tutored in Polish and placed in a public school. After two and a half years his father set up a small studio area for him in their home and allowed him to spend his time drawing and painting. At the age of nine he exchanged original art posters for free admission to a local cinema.World War II
He was accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1939 and arranged to live with an uncle in the city, but a few days later, the German Army invaded the city and Iskowitz returned to Kielce. The Nazi persecution of the country’s Jewish population began almost immediately. On March 31, 1941, the occupying forces established the Kielce Ghetto, a few square blocks surrounded by barbed-wire-topped walls and locked gates. The Iskowitz family and all the other Jews in the city were forced to live there. They were soon joined by Jews transported from elsewhere in Poland for “containment,” and by August 1942, more than 25,000 people were jammed into this squalid area. In September 1943 the Kielce Ghetto was burned. Gershon and his brother, Yosl, were sent to Auschwitz.Gershon painted or drew at night only after every one else was asleep. He said "Why did I do it? I think it kept me alive. There was nothing to do. I had to do something in order to forget the hunger. It's very hard to explain, but in the camp painting was a necessity for survival." He was transferred to Buchenwald in the fall of 1944. Near the end of the war he tried to escape but was seriously wounded. After the April 11 liberation of Buchenwald he was sent to recuperate in hospitals for about nine months.
From January to May 1947 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and had private study with Oskar Kokoschka who painted in an intense expressionistic style.
Life in Canada
Gershon's first application to move to Canada was rejected because he had a limp. "Always when my life was in danger," Iskowitz found "I did a drawing and pulled through." He reapplied and drew a picture for the bureaucrat in immigration. The fellow declared Gershon a genius, predicted a great future for him in Canada, approved his emigration application and said that Gershon would have special privileges on the voyage to his new home. Thus in 1949 he emigrated to Canada to stay with some relatives living in Toronto.In 1952 he attended the Artist's Workshop, Toronto and began sketching trips to Markham and Uxbridge. He stopped painting scenes from his past in the mid 1950s and turned to the Canadian landscape for his models. A major change in his painting style occurred in 1967 when a Canada Council grant permitted him to view the northern landscape from a helicopter. His painting became explosions of colour and light.
In 1954 he had his first exhibition with the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists. He also did some part-time teaching at McKellar Lake. He moved to his own studio on Spadina Avenue, Toronto. In 1964 he became associated with Gallery Moos, where he had many one-man exhibitions.
Gershon said "there was that period after '65 for a while when people would say, 'Do you still paint?' and I'd say, 'Yes, yes, I still paint.' And they'd say painting is dead, you know. Or if they didn't say that they'd say, 'Why don't you use acrylics?' Well, I tried them, but I stayed with oils, and the watercolours I'd been doing since I was a kid. It doesn't matter what you use, it matters how you use it."
In 1982 Gershon was honoured by the Art Gallery of Ontario with a forty-year retrospective of his work. A subset of the exhibition was put on display in London, England. Gershon said "... is just an extension of myself. It's a plastic interpretation of the way I think. You reflect your own vision. That's what it's all about. Art is like evolution and life, and you've got to search for life, stand on your own feet and continue. The only fear I have is before starting to paint. When I paint, I'm great, I feel great."
In gratitude for the value that artistic grants had given to his career he established the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in 1985. Its mandate was to award the annual Gershon Iskowitz Prize, in association with the Canada Council in 1986 and 1987, of $25,000 to mature artists. The Foundation awarded the prize on its own from 1988 to 2006. It then partnered with the AGO in 2007 to award this prize as the winner would then receive an exhibition at the AGO.
He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. On January 26, 1988, Gershon Iskowitz died in Toronto, Ontario.
Works in public collections in Canada
Over the years, many public art galleries have acquired, through purchase and donation, works by Gershon Iskowitz. Beginning in the mid-1960s, his work received critical attention and was shown in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. In addition, in 1995 in celebration of the Prize’s 10th Anniversary the Foundation donated over one hundred and forty paintings and works on paper to many of these same institutions. The works have been included in major exhibitions and many are exhibited as part of the Permanent Collections of these institutions.| Institution | City | Province |
| Agnes Etherington Art Centre | Kingston | ON |
| Art Gallery of Greater Victoria | Victoria | BC |
| Art Gallery of Hamilton | Hamilton | ON |
| Art Gallery of Nova Scotia | Halifax | NS |
| Art Gallery of Ontario | Toronto | ON |
| Art Gallery of Peterborough | Peterborough | ON |
| Art Gallery of Windsor | Windsor | ON |
| Art Gallery of York University | Toronto | ON |
| Beaverbrook Art Gallery | Fredericton | NB |
| Carleton University Art Gallery | Ottawa | ON |
| Confederation Centre of the Arts | Charlottetown | PEI |
| Edmonton Art Gallery | Edmonton | AB |
| Glenbow Museum | Calgary | AB |
| Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House University of Toronto | Toronto | ON |
| Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery | Kitchener | ON |
| Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery Concordia University | Montreal | QC |
| London Regional Art and Historical Museums | London | ON |
| Macdonald Stewart Art Centre | Guelph | ON |
| MacKenzie Art Gallery | Regina | SK |
| MacLaren Art Centre | Barrie | ON |
| McMaster Museum of Art | Hamilton | ON |
| McMichael Canadian Art Collection | Kleinberg | ON |
| Montreal Museum of Fine Arts | Montreal | QC |
| Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC | Vancouver | BC |
| Musée d'art de Joliette | Joliette | QC |
| Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec | Québec | QC |
| Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art | Toronto | ON |
| National Gallery of Canada | Ottawa | ON |
| Nickle Arts Museum | Calgary | AB |
| Owens Art Galler Mount Allison University | Sackville | NB |
| Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery | Oshawa | ON |
| Rodman Hall Arts Centre | St. Catharines | ON |
| The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery | St. John’s | NFLD |
| University of Lethbridge Art Gallery | Lethbridge | AB |
| University College University of Toronto | Toronto | ON |
| Vancouver Art Gallery | Vancouver | BC |
| Winnipeg Art Gallery | Winnipeg | MA |
One-man exhibitions
The following table summarizes Iskowitz's one-man exhibitions:| Year | Venue | City | Prov / State |
| 1960-1 | Here and Now Gallery | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1961 | YMHA | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1963 | Dorothy Cameron Gallery | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1964 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1966 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1967 | Waterloo University | Waterloo | Ontario |
| 1967 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1969 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1970 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1971 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1973 | Hart House | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1973 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1973 | Rodman Hall Arts Centre | St. Catharines | Ontario |
| 1972 | Galerie Allen | Vancouver | British Columbia |
| 1974 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1975 | Glenbow-Alberta Institute | Calgary | Alberta |
| 1975 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1976 | Owens Art Gallery Mount Allison University | Sackville | New Brunswick |
| 1976 | Canadian Art Galleries | Calgary | Alberta |
| 1976 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1977 | Martha Jackson Gallery | New York | New York |
| 1977 | Art Gallery of Nova Scotia | Halifax | Nova Scotia |
| 1977 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1978 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1979 | Thomas Gallery | Winnipeg | Manitoba |
| 1979 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1979 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1980 | Robertson Galleries | Ottawa | Ontario |
| 1981 | Gallery Moos | Toronto | Ontario |
| 1982 | Art Gallery of Ontario Forty Year Retrospective | Toronto | Ontario |
Group exhibitions
Winners of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize
In 2007, the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation in partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario established the annual Gershon Iskowitz Prize presented by AGO in order to raise awareness of the visual arts in Canada.| Year | Artist | City |
| 2018 | Shuvinai Ashoona | Kinngait |
| 2017 | Valérie Blass | Montreal |
| 2016 | Rebecca Belmore | Montreal |
| 2015 | Sandra Meigs | Victoria |
| 2014 | Liz Magor | Vancouver |
| 2013 | Geoffrey Farmer | Vancouver |
| 2012 | Kim Adams | Toronto |
| 2011 | Michael Snow | Toronto |
| 2010 | Brian Jungen | Vancouver |
| 2009 | Shary Boyle | Toronto |
| 2008 | Françoise Sullivan | Montreal |
| 2007 | Mark Lewis | London, England |
| 2006 | Iain Baxter& | Windsor |
| 2005 | Max Dean | Toronto |
| 2004 | Rodney Graham | Vancouver |
| 2003 | Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller | Guelph |
| 2002 | Geoffrey James | Toronto |
| 2001 | John Massey | Toronto |
| 2000 | Paterson Ewen | London |
| 1999 | Stan Douglas | Vancouver |
| 1998 | Shirley Wiitasalo | Toronto |
| 1997 | Ron Moppett | Calgary |
| 1996 | Murray Favro | London |
| 1995 | Betty Goodwin | Montreal |
| 1994 | Eric Cameron | Calgary |
| 1993 | Vera Frenkel | Toronto |
| 1992 | Irene F. Whittome | Montreal |
| 1991 | Arnaud Maggs | Toronto |
| 1990 | Jack Shadbolt | Vancouver |
| 1989 | Gathie Falk | Vancouver |
| 1988 | General Idea | Toronto and New York |
| 1987 | Louis Comtois | Montreal |
| 1986 | Denis Juneau | Montreal |