Lowrie Warrener

Lowrie Warrener (January 29, 1900 – February 2, 1983) was a Canadian painter who was a pioneer of modernism, along with Kathleen Munn and Bertram Brooker.^[1]

Warrener was inspired to begin painting when he met Arthur Lismer at a 1920 exhibition hosted by the Sarnia Women’s Conservation Committee at the Sarnia Carnegie Library. He was initially influenced by the Group of Seven`s colour and style.^[2] In 1921, he left Sarnia for Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art, to study sculpture and painting.^[2]

Upon graduation, in 1945, he travelled to Europe, going to Antwerp to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (with a letter of introduction from his teacher, Arthur Lismer, who had studied there).^[3] In 1924, he also worked at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, an open studio.^[4]

About 1925, he discovered the book Art by Clive Bell (1914) and read it with enthusiasm.^[4] He wrote about reading it to a fellow-student at the Ontario College of Art, Carl Schaefer, in letters that are today in Ottawa in the Library and Archives Canada, in the Carl Schaefer Papers, MG 30 D-171.^[4] In these letters, he stressed the necessity in painting for strong design, the solid and three-dimensional.^[4] He told Schaefer to use figures as designs and turn everything into a form you can take hold of. He advised to put in the colour the shape suggested and forget about whether a thing looks natural.^[4]

When he returned to Canada in 1925, he proved he had taken to heart the lesson of art abroad. His work was in a flat-patterned, decorative landscape style.^[3] Among other characteristics, he used strong colour and a red contour line. As a result, he was asked to be a contributor to the Group of Seven's 1926 exhibition, a signal honour. In 1926, Warrener had an exhibition of his own at the Sarnia Carnegie Library and sold 25 paintings.^[2] It too was considered a triumph.

In the years from 1926 to 1934, Warrener`s abstracted work, perhaps under the influence of Lawren Harris, became dark and simplified into blocky semi-geometric shapes, as in Solitude (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa), painted by Warrener in 1929.^[2][4]

In 1930, Warrener became a set designer for avant-garde theatre, even writing a play to put on with one by play-wright and teacher Herman Voaden. Warrener intended the play to combine drama, music and pantomime.^[4]

Warrener painted sporadically in the years which followed. In 2009, Cassandra Getty at the Art Gallery of Windsor curated the show, Kathleen Munn and Lowrie Warrener: The Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space.^[5]

When Warrener was eighty-two, he spoke of his lack of knowledge when he chose to paint abstractly.^[4] He said that he did not know what abstract was. He simply chose colour that he liked and filled space. He called what he painted an abstract impression of colour.^[4] However, in the period 1925–1930, along with Kathleen Munn, who knew about Paul Cézanne, and Bertram Brooker who combined simple geometric forms with differently coloured planes in his work, he was a pioneer of Canadian modernism.

• Canadian War Museum, Ottawa^[6]
• Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown^[7]
• Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia^[2]
• McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg^[8]
• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa^[9]
• The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa^[10]

• Getty, Cassandra (2010). The Logic of Nature, the Romance of Space: Elements of Canadian Modernist Painting. Windsor, Oshawa: Art Gallery of Windsor, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
• Murray, Joan (1994). Origins of Abstraction in Canada: Modernist Pioneers. Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
• Nasgaard, Roald (2008). Abstract painting in Canada. Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre. ISBN 978-1-55365-226-7. OCLC 72262120.
• Schaefer, Carl (n.d.). Carl Schaefer Retrospective Exhibition: Paintings from 1926 to 1969. Montreal. Retrieved November 24, 2020.