Early Snow (Michael Snow 1947-1962)

Michael Snow is one of Canada’s greatest living artists, widely acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Canadian art. Early Snow focuses on the nascent stages of the artist’s career—which is comparatively underexamined in art commentary and critical literature—and demonstrates how wide-ranging were his achievements in painting, drawing, sculpture, foldage, cinema, and photography. Snow’s first achievements may serve as a blueprint for his later career, but they also give ample proof of the creative heights he had already reached by the age of thirty-three. This book reveals a young man whose catholic interests in art and literature contributed to his uncanny ability to create profoundly original works of art. Perceptive essays by James King argue that these artworks are best approached in the context of Snow’s knowledge of modern European art (Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson, Alberto Giacometti) and contemporary American art (Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli, Donald Judd, Marcel Duchamp), and that, ultimately, the work created during this era is about transformation.