Artist, educator. Claude Breeze was born on October 9, 1938 in Nelson, British Columbia. Breeze studied with Ernest Linder for a year in Saskatoon (1954-1955) then with Arthur McKay and Kenneth Lochhead in Regina. He subsequently studied for a year at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) (1958). Breeze worked at the University of British Columbia in the medical illustration department. Breeze relocated to Ontario in 1972 after accepting a position as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario. In 1976, Breeze became a part of the Fine Arts faculty at York University.
Breeze first came to national attention in the early 1960s with a series of violent, acid-colored figurative paintings about sexual anguish. The Lovers in a Landscape series (1964) was influenced by the work of Francis Bacon, Persian miniatures, and popular visual culture. This series is a part of the canon of postwar Canadian art and helped to inaugurate the West Coast painting scene of the 1960s. It is also important to note that Breeze was the first painter in Canada to represent in art violent images from the mass media. His work is included in private, corporate, and public collections. A member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Breeze was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in recognition of his contribution to Canadian art.
Additional information and materials about Claude Breeze are available on request in Art, Architecture and Planning at the University of British Columbia Library. http://www.library.ubc.ca/finearts/
Discrete project sites documenting the work of specific artists and collectives in detail.
Essays and conversation providing a context for exploring the Project Sites and Archives.
Video interviews conducted between December 2008 and May 2009 reflecting on Vancouver’s art scene in the sixties.