Kenneth Lochhead (1926-2006)

Born in Ottawa in 1926, Kenneth Lochhead studied art at Queen’s University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Barnes Foundation. He was appointed the Director of the School of Art at the University of Saskatchewan’s Regina campus in 1950 and remained there until 1964.

In 1955, while in Regina, he initiated the Emma Lake Professional Artists’ Workshops, which brought about a renaissance in Saskatchewan art and helped propel it onto the international scene. He was also a member of the Regina Five painters who exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in 1961, and who were considered to be at the forefront of Canada’s modern art movement at the time. He later taught at the University of Manitoba, (1964-1973), York University, (1973-1975), and the University of Ottawa (1975-1989). He retired in 1989 and worked in his studio on a full-time basis until his death in 2006.

From 1953 until 2006, Lochhead exhibited in more than 300 Canadian and international exhibitions, and received 18 major art commissions. His public commissions included a mural for the Regina Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion; a mural for the Gander International Airport; the design for Manitoba’s Centennial Stamp; relief decoration for the Canadian Chancery in Warsaw, Poland; and a mural for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ottawa. In 2005 the MacKenzie Art Gallery marked Saskatchewan’s Centennial celebrations with a sixty-year retrospective of Lochhead’s career. Kenneth Lochhead: Garden of Light paid homage to the art, teaching, education, and vision of one of the most important figures in contemporary Canadian art history.

While the majority of his accolades and achievements occurred in his native Canada, Lochhead's work was also well received in the United States. A testament to his talent and standing in the international post-war scene, Lochhead's work was included in the seminal 1964 exhibition Post-Painterly Abstraction, curated by the iconic American critic, Clement Greenberg. This ground-breaking exhibit - of which the school of abstraction known by the same name was borne - originated at the Los Angeles County of Museum Art, before travelling to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Art Gallery of Toronto. The exhibit included 31 artists, almost all of whom would go on to become some of the most acclaimed and well known artists of the post-war era: Jack Bush, Gene Davis, Friedel Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Ray Parker, and Frank Stella, among others. 

Aside from his distinguished career as an artist and educator, Lochhead served on many national and provincial public boards, committees, and organizations. He was awarded The Order of Canada in 1971, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Regina in 2001, and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2006.

Lochhead's work is in many significant Canadian and international institutional, public, and private collections. 

Source: Kenneth Lochhead Estate

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