Joseph Drapell (born March 13, 1940) is a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

abstract painter.

Early life

Drapell was born in

Humpolec Humpolec (; ) is a town in Pelhřimov District in the Vysočina Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 12,000 inhabitants. Administrative division Humpolec consists of 12 municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): ...

, Czechoslovakia, and emigrated to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

in 1966. From 1968-1970 he studied at the

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Academy of Art, a graduate school for architecture, art, and design, was founded by George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth in 1932. It is the art school of the Cranbrook Educational Community. Located in Bloomfield Hills, Mi ...

Bloomfield Hills Bloomfield Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northern suburb of Detroit on the Woodward Corridor, Bloomfield Hills is located roughly northwest of downtown Detroit, and is surrounded on most sides by Bloomfi ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. At the Cranbrook Academy he met visiting Canadian artist

Jack Bush Jack Hamilton Bush (March 20, 1909 – January 24, 1977) was a Canadian abstract painter. A member of Painters Eleven, his paintings are associated with the Color Field movement and Post-painterly Abstraction. Inspired by Henri Matisse and Am ...

and the American

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

. Bush influenced his work by telling him to pay more attention to intuition. He moved permanently to

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

in 1970 and during the period from 1972 through 1974, in Toronto, he developed a technique of applying paint with a broad spreading device attached to a movable support having also been influenced by the American painter

Morris Louis Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D ...

Career

Drapell began his formal career as an artist when he was 28 and has participated in numerous exhibitions. In 1968 Drapell designed and built a public sculpture titled ''Life'' in Halifax. He is a Canadian/Czech artist from two generations after the

Painters Eleven Painters Eleven (also known as Painters 11) was a group of abstract artists active in Canada between 1953 and 1960. They are associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. History Since the 1920s, artists in English Canada had been heavily i ...

but does not see any connection to that group as well as a founding member of the New New Painters, a group that has exhibited together internationally since the 1990s. The core of this group is from the United States: it has two Canadian members: Drapell and Graham Peacock from Edmonton. Drapell and his wife, the poet Anna Maclachlan, founded the first Museum of New New Painting in 1998 devoted to exhibiting New New art. One writer calls it everything meretriculous and impure, but admits Drapell can produce impressive effects, often based on a Georgian Bay retreat bought in 1971. Drapell is also a member of the

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) is a Canadian arts-related organization that was founded in 1880. History 1880 to 1890 The title of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was received from Victoria of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria on 16 ...

References

External links

official website.

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Drapell, Joseph 1940 births Living people People from Humpolec Czechoslovak emigrants to Canada 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Czech male painters Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts 21st-century Canadian painters 20th-century Canadian male artists 21st-century Canadian male artists Canadian abstract artists