1965-70	1970	1971-75	1976-79
1980-85	1985-90	1991-93	1993-2002

The west coast, where there is a natural surreality in the landscape, has long been the home of many  artists whose work draws
from surrealistic sources. Some have worked together in various combinations and eventually made connections with the Paris-
based groups who continued after the death of André Breton in 1966.

The first recorded presence of surrealist art in Vancouver was that of Dr. Grace W. Pailthorpe and her hsuband, Dr. Rueben
Mendelev, both psychologists who lived here during the 1940s. Pailthorpe was a member of the British Surrealist Group and both
she and her husband practised automatism in painting and drawing. Together they showed the automatist technique to Jock
MacDonald of the Group of Seven, who experimented with it secretly.

One of the principle writers to concentrate on the work of Canadian surrealists was the late José Pierre, who wrote
L'Univers Surrealiste (editions Somogy, 1983) and a research paper, Surrealism in Canada (University Rabelais de Tours) which included members of the west coast group. Pierre worked with André Breton, Marcel Duchamp and Edouard Jaguer organizing
surrealist exhibitions in Europe and the U.S. after WW II. 

The PHASES Movement, created in 1945 by poet and artist, Edouard Jaguer, during the Second World War to try and keep the surrealist spirit alive has exhibited and published the work of many Vancouver artists in the 1980's and early 90's. Jaguer's work
and the other artists of his PHASES Movement were shown in Vancouver in 1983.

Recognition of west coast surrealism began with the University of British Columbia in the 1973 exhibition, Canadian West Coast Hermetics  and the 1971 Vancouver School of Collage. The year 1978 saw  members of the West Coast Surrealist Group invited to exhibit in Surrealism Unlimited, organized by Conroy Maddox at London's  Camden   Art  Centre.  In 1979 Natalie Luckyj of Queens University organized  a touring exhibition entitled Other Realities: The Legacy of Surrealism in Canadian Art which toured to the Canadian Cultural Centres in Paris and London. In the 1980's the movement was acknowledged by Dr. David Burnett in his comprehensive book, Contemporary Canadian Painting.

In 1997, Professor Yves M. Larocque received a doctorate from the Sorbonne for his thesis,  Surrealism in English Canada, which featured many references to the various west coast groups during over three decades. Adjudicating the thesis were some of the
leading scholars of 20th century art in Europe.  They included: Josée Vovelle,of the Sorbonne, whose other specialities include Dutch and Swedish Surrealism. The second adjudicator from the Sorbonne was Gerard Monnier, a proponent of diffusionist theory, Michel Remy, an expert on Surrealism in the U.K. A Canadian scholar, the author a book on French Canadian automaticism, Patrick Imbert, was also present  from the University of Ottawa.

In July, 2005 a group exhibition I co-organized with director, Natalia Segarra, was held at the Museo Granell in Santiago de
Compostela, Spain entitled West Coast Surreal, A Canadian Perspective. It included myself, Pnina Granirer, Martin Guderna and Gordon Payne.

Other artists, many of them working in the area of surrealist art, continued working outside the  formal west coast group, but their natural inclination to the magical and to the surreal, places them in the orbit of this chronology.

-Gregg Simpson, 2005 

Experiments in collage begin with Gary Lee Nova, Al Neil, Gregg Simpson and bill bissett. They also collaborated in experimental multi-media work together at the Sound Gallery, Motion Studios, Intermedia and exhibited collages and paintings at The Mandan Ghetto Gallery.

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        -Jack Wise exhibited mandala paintings at the New Design Gallery, Vancouver.

       - Lawren Harris, of the Group of Seven, completed a group of mystical abstract paintings before
        his death. Although not a surrealist, Harris' interest in the metaphysical, puts him into the realm
        of the Surrealist's Second Manifesto.

       -Gary Lee Nova exhibition of hexagon paintings at the UBC Fine Arts Gallery, works which
        presage the post-Pop, neo-surrealist style of the 1970s.

        -Claude Breeze's Lovers in a Landscape, shown at New Design Gallery, Vancouver

         bill bissett published collages and drawings, often of a surreal nature, in blewointment press
        magazine.

Classic period of collage in Vancouver: Lee Nova and Simpson made collages from etchings, influenced by Max Ernst and also made dada/pop style photomontages;  Al Neil made complex, totemic, junk assemblages which evoked Kurt Schwitters; bill bissett continued doing a combination of the mystical and satiric in his photomontages and mixed media work.

Jack Wise: Eight Buddhas, tempera

Film makers at this time in Vancouver  used techniques like juxtaposition and quick cut editing to achieve a dissociation of the senses. Poets david uu and Gerry Gilbert and artist/musician Gregg Simpson all made dada-inspired home movies in 8mm while fiImmakers Al Razutis, Dave Rimmer, Al Sens, Gary Lee Nova and others made more elaborate statements combining abstraction with cosmic imagery.

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Continue to the Chronology for 1970