Colville

Amazing. A must have for all who love this remarkable artist.

Beautiful new book on this iconic Canadian artist.

I`d never heard of Canadian artist Alex Colville until I turned his work up when researching other painters a couple of years ago.This hardback book is an exhibition catalogue and monograph published to accompany shows held in Canada in 2015.Colville works in a realist tradition, but his images often have a surreal quality, like the stillness of a single frame from a film and the arresting juxtaposition of elements that create drama and a strange dynamic of their own; the bulk of his work is executed in acrylics or other water-based media, such as polymer emulsion or casein, which suits his hard-edged technique and subtle choice of colour palette.The book is very well illustrated with good-sized plates of his work and two short black and white photo essays of the artist and his working environment bookending the volume.There are also some film stills that reveal Colville`s influence on cinema.An interesting book to have on a painter who isn`t well-known in this country at all, but is greatly admired in North America; certainly a fortunate discovery as far as I`m concerned.

Some of the images are poorly reproduced. I.e. Colville’s most famous painting, “Horse and Train” is grossly underexposed (as shown in the photo I’ve included with this review). Hard to believe that the publisher thought this was acceptable. I just received the book and have not read it yet (but have looked at all the images), thus I can not comment on the literature. I do not recommend this book due to the poor image quality.

I bought a book I knew I wanted. It was listed "Good" but it is even better! Delighted with my purchase.

A little disappointed in the color quality of the paintings as reproduced in this book. I saw the exhibit at the AGO so know that the paintings have much more life and vibrancy. Otherwise...well done....a love story as well as a retrospective. Alex Colville is a Canadian icon !

have always been a colville fan and this is an excellent collection of his work and the biographical details were most intersting.