Victor Cicansky, (February 12, 1935 – March 3, 2025) was a Canadian sculptor known for his witty narrative

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

and bronze fruits and vegetables.Ferguson, Bruce and Phillips, Carol A. ''Victor Cicansky: Clay Sculpture.'' Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery: Regina 1983. A founder of the Regina Clay Movement,Gotlieb, Rachel. "Victor Cicansky." ''The Canadian Encyclopedia.'
Web.
/ref> Cicansky combined a "wry sense of style" with a postmodern "aesthetic based on place and personal experience". In recognition of his work, Cicansky was appointed member of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...

(2009) and the

Saskatchewan Order of Merit The Saskatchewan Order of Merit is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Instituted in 1985 by Lieutenant Governor Frederick Johnson, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Grant Devine, the order is admi ...

(1997), and was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2012), the

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal () or The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal was a commemorative medal created in 2012 to mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's accession in 1952. There are four versions of the medal: one iss ...

(2012), as well as the Victoria and Albert Award for Ceramic Sculpture (London UK, 1987).

Early life and education

Victor Cicansky was born in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina ( ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 Canadian census, ...

on February 12, 1935."Cicansky: Biography & Life Story." ''Regina Clay: World in the Making, MacKenzie Art Gallery - Virtual Museum Canada.'
Web.
/ref> The eldest son of Mary and Frank Cicansky (Czekanski) of Romanian descent, he grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Garlic Flats, known for its vegetable gardens. At age 16, he left school to work in construction, but later returned to graduate with a Bachelor of Education from

University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan (U of S, or USask) is a Universities in Canada, Canadian public university, public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatch ...

(1964), and Bachelor of Arts (1967) from the

University of Regina The University of Regina is a public university located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Founded in 1911 as a private denominational high school of the Methodist Church of Canada, it began an association with the University of Saskatchewan as a j ...

. Hired by the Regina Board of Education he taught elementary and high school and studied ceramics under Beth Hone and Jack Sures at the Regina College School of Art in his spare time. In 1967 while attending a summer workshop at

Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, commonly called "Haystack," is a craft school located at 89 Haystack School Drive on the coast of Deer Isle, Maine. History Haystack was founded in 1950 by a group of craft artists in the Belfast, Maine are ...

in Maine, Cicansky met

Funk art Funk art is an American art movement that was a reaction against the nonobjectivity of abstract expressionism. An anti-establishment movement, Funk art brought figuration back as subject matter in painting again rather than limiting itself to ...

sculptor

Robert Arneson Robert Carston Arneson (September 4, 1930 – November 2, 1992) was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades. Early life and education Robert Carston Arnes ...

who convinced him to attend the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

. There he met painter

Roy De Forest Roy De Forest (11 February 1930 – 18 May 2007) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor, and teacher. He was involved in both the Funk art and Nut art movements in the Bay Area of California. De Forest's art is known for its quirk ...

and ceramist

David Gilhooly David Gilhooly (also known as David James Gilhooly III; April 15, 1943 – August 21, 2013) was an American ceramicist, sculptor, painter, printmaker, and professor. He is best known for pioneering the Funk art movement. He made a series of ...

and assimilated new ideas, styles and techniques. At Davis, Cicansky was awarded the Kingsley Annual Award for Sculpture (1969) and he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 1970. Cicansky then returned to Saskatchewan to teach art education at the University of Regina, and began to explore the imagery of his youth in figurative narrativion. In 1974, Cicansky moved "back to the land" and converted a former school in Craven into a studio.

Career

Art

Cicansky explored Prairie imagery – from fruit, vegetables and canning jars to outhouses and Volkswagens – in sculpture. Inspired by California Funk, his work included brightly painted figurative narratives with subjects – "characters rather than caricatures" – within architectural constructions described as "hard and rough, deliberately etched and maintaining the crude granularity of the reinforced clay." Other works reference art; his terra-cotta ''The Old Working Class-1'' (Sturdy Stone Centre, Saskatoon) is a visual play on

Van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artwork ...

's '' Potato Eaters''. His oeuvre also includes tables, benches or plates entwined with pear trees, grapevines and corn.

Regina Clay Movement (1968–1988)

Cicansky's first solo exhibition – held in 1968 at the

Dunlop Art Gallery The Regina Public Library is the citywide public library system of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Regina Public Library is established under the provisions of ''The Public Libraries Act'', 1996. The general management, regulation, and control ...

(

Regina Public Library The Regina Public Library is the citywide public library system of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Regina Public Library is established under the provisions of ''The Public Libraries Act'', 1996. The general management, regulation, and control ...

) – was followed by solo shows in 1970 at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

, Davis, and in 1973 at the Moose Jaw Art Museum. In January 1973, he also participated in the sculptural clay group exhibition held at the

MacKenzie Art Gallery The MacKenzie Art Gallery (MAG; ) is an art museum located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The museum occupies the multipurpose T. C. Douglas Building, situated at the edge of the Wascana Centre. The building holds eight galleries totaling to of ...

(University of Regina). This show caught the attention of the

Canada Council for the Arts The Canada Council for the Arts (), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It is Canada's public arts funder, with a mandate to foster and promote the study a ...

who selected Cicansky along with

Joe Fafard Joseph Fafard (September 2, 1942 – March 16, 2019) was a Canadian sculptor. Biography Joseph Fafard was a twelfth generation Canadian born in 1942 in Ste. Marthe, Saskatchewan, to French Canadians Leopold Fafard and Julienne Cantin. Fafard is ...

Russell Yuristy Russell Yuristy is a Canadian artist whose work is included in several major collections including the National Gallery of Canada. Yuristy was inducted as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2014. Life and career Yuristy was bo ...

, and

Marilyn Levine Marilyn Levine (born 22 December 1935 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, died 2 April 2005 in Oakland, California) was a Canadian ceramics artist known for her trompe-l'œil art. She built a reputation making ceramic works of art that looked like leather h ...

and

Ann James Ann Catherine Stewart James (born 6 October 1952) is an Australian illustrator of more than 60 children's books, some of which she also wrote. She was born in Melbourne, Victoria. James has been illustrating books since the 1980s and has beco ...

for ''Canada Trajectoires ’73'' in Paris, the first international exhibition of the Regina ceramists. In the following years this group exhibited across Canada and were known collectively as the Regina Clay Movement. Commissioned by the provincial government, Cicansky, Fafard, Yuristy, and David Thauberger, with Cicansky's father Frank and five other folk artists, created ''The Grain Bin'' for the 1976 Montreal Olympics. In 1977 and 1980, Cicansky's clay tableaux were selected to decorate the provincial government's Sturdy-Stone Centre in Saskatoon, an endorsement of Postmodernism and the Regina Clay Movement.

Public art

Cicansky's earliest works included many large-scale public art commissions, including the murals ''The Old Working Class'' and ''The New Working Class'' for the Sturdy Stone Centre (1978–81), ''The Garden Fence'' for the CBC building in Regina (1981–84), as well as ''Regina: My World'' (1979) for The Co-operators (1979). He created the bronze ''The Garden of the Mind'' at the College of Agriculture in Saskatoon (1992) as well as a gateway sculpture and gazebo art piece for the Grow Regina Community Gardens (2009). In 1989 Cicansky was also commissioned to create a gift, presented by Premier Grant Devine, to the Duke and Duchess of York. That year Cicansky moved back to Regina.

Major exhibitions

Cicansky and the Regina ceramists drew international attention at ''Canada Trajectoires ’73'' held at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris,Long, Timothy. "A Comprehensible World: The Work of Cicansky, Thauberger, Yuristy and Fafard." ''Regina Clay: World in the Making.'' ''Virtual Museum Canada.'
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/ref> and national interest following exhibitions at the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; ) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located on Dundas Street, Dundas Street West in the Grange Park (neighbourhood), Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, the museum complex takes up of phys ...

(1973),

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) is an art museum located in Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Situated in Rockland, Greater Victoria, Rockland, Victoria, the museum occupies a building complex; made up of ...

(1974), Alberta College of Art Gallery (1976)

Dalhousie Art Gallery The Dalhousie Arts Centre, at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, contains a number of theatres (including an outdoor rooftop theatre), Dalhousie Art Gallery, classrooms, and a sculpture garden. It remains the premier performing arts v ...

(1976), Southern Alberta Art Gallery (1977), and the Saskatchewan-California ceramic exchanges (1980) at the

and Dunlop Art Gallery. In the following decade Cicansky's work was exhibited with the Regina ceramists at the London Regional Art Gallery (now

Museum London Museum London is an art and history museum located in London, Ontario, Canada. It is located near the forks of the Thames River. It started its operations in 1940 with London Public Library and amalgamated with London Regional Art Gallery and Lon ...

) (1982),

Glenbow Museum The Glenbow Museum is an art and history local museum, regional museum in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The museum focuses on Western Canada, Western Canadian history and culture, including Indigenous perspectives. The Glenbow was establ ...

(1984), at ''Saskatchewan Arts and Crafts'' exposition in Jilin, China (1985),

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) is a public provincial museums of Canada, provincial art museum based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The art museum's primary building complex is located in downtown Halifax and takes up ...

(1987),

Mendel Art Gallery The Mendel Art Gallery was a major creative cultural centre in City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Operating from 1964 to 2015, it housed a permanent collection of more than 7,500 works of art. The gallery was managed by the city-owned Saskatoon ...

(1989), as well as in the 2006 touring exhibition ''Regina Clay: Worlds in the Making'' curated by Timothy Long. In 1983 a solo exhibition of his work ''Victor Cicansky: Clay Sculpture'', mounted by the

,Ferguson, Bruce and Phillips, Carol A. ''Victor Cicansky: Clay Sculpture.'' Regina SA: Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1983. toured the

, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery,

, and the Swift Current National Exhibition Centre. Throughout his career, solo exhibitions of his work were held at Mira Godard Gallery (Toronto), Galerie de Bellefeuille (Montreal), Slate Fine Art Gallery (Regina), and Douglas Udell Gallery (Edmonton). A prolific artist, Cicansky also exhibited at Masters Gallery (Calgary) and at Art Fairs across North America."Victor Cicansky CV." ''Galerie de Bellefeuille.'
Web.
/ref> Cicansky continued to live and work in Regina. In 2019, the MacKenzie Art Gallery debuted ''Victor Cicansky: The Gardener's Universe'', a touring

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

exhibition which brought together over 100 of his works. A film was made at that time about him. The film was shown in the gallery again in 2025 in honour of his life and death.

Selected public collections

Cicansky's work is found in the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

(Ottawa ON),

Gardiner Museum The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art (commonly shortened to the Gardiner Museum) is a ceramics museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is situated within University of Toronto's St. George campus, in downtown Toronto. The museum b ...

(Toronto ON),

Burlington Art Centre The Art Gallery of Burlington, founded in 1978, is the seventh largest public art gallery in Ontario. The gallery collects and maintains Canada's largest collection of contemporary Canadian ceramics. It is located on the City of Burlington water ...

Confederation Centre Art Gallery The Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG; ) is an art museum that forms a part of the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The art museum pavilion forms the northeast portion of the Confederation Centre ...

(Charlottetown PE),

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is an art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest art museum in Canada by gallery space. The museum is located on the historic Golden Square Mile stretch of Sherbrooke Street west. The MMFA ...

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal The Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (, MACM) is a contemporary art museum in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the Place des festivals in the Quartier des spectacles and is part of the Place des Arts complex. Founded in 1964, it ...

, and the

National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto The is an art museum in Kyoto, Japan. This Kyoto museum is also known by the English acronym MoMAK (Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto). History The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK) was initially created as the Annex Museum of the Nationa ...

(Japan).

Recognition and contribution

Throughout his career Cicansky was recognized for his unique iconography and aesthetic. Described as "non-elitist" and a "celebration of the harvest" by curator Bruce Ferguson, his work reflects his upbringing, love of gardening and opposition to urban "disdain of anything small." For Ferguson, Cicansky's tableaux, ''The Old Working Class'' and ''The New Working Class'' reflects a concern for local histories and "Prairie socialism". At the time of his solo exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, journalist Nancy Tousley wrote: "These works are about place, but they take a slightly distanced view — their knowing humour is benevolent but satirical, it hovers outside or above the depicted scenario." Curator Timothy Long wrote that his fusion of art references with childhood memories, a "riotous marriage of high and low culture"... "results in a wry prairie humour which is uniquely Cicansky's." As curator of the exhibition ''Regina Clay: World in the Making'', Long also noted that the Regina ceramists were "among the first in Canada to win respect for ceramics as a sculptural medium.... Their assertion of the importance of place aligned them with the emerging postmodern concern for locality and they struck a chord with the popular imagination at a moment when the back-to-the-land movement was at its zenith."Long, Timothy. "Regina Clay: World in the Making." ''Kelowna Art Gallery''
Web.
/ref> Although representative of an era, for Dunlop Gallery curator Wayne Morgan: "The stories told by the main clay artists during this period — Cicansky, Fafard, Levine, Thauberger and Yuristy — remain true today and are still important." In recognition for his artistic achievement, Cicansky was awarded the Victoria and Albert Award for Ceramic Sculpture (1987), the

(1996),"Victor Cicansky," ''Saskatchewan NAC.'
Web.
/ref> the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2012). and the

(2012). In 2009 he was named a member of the

for his contribution as an artist and educator. Cicansky taught at the

University of California at Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was ...

(1968–70),

Banff Centre for the Arts Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (formerly Banff Centre) is an arts and culture educational institution in Banff, Alberta. It offers arts programs in the performing and fine arts, as well as leadership training. It was established in 193 ...

(1972),

Nova Scotia College of Art and Design NSCAD University, also known as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), is a public university, public art school, art university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university is a co-educational institution tha ...

(1973), and at the University of Regina's Faculty of Education (1970–84) and Visual Arts Department (1984–93). He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1994 and, in 2007, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Regina. In 2004 a book on his life and work written by Donald Kerr, ''The Garden of Art: Vic Cicansky, Sculptor'', was published. Cicansky died on March 3, 2025, at the age of 90.Renowned Saskatchewan sculptor Victor Cicansky dies at 90
/ref>

Publications

* *

References

External links

* * Gotlieb, Rachel. "Victor Cicansky." ''The Canadian Encyclopedia.'
Web.
* "Victor Cicansky." ''ArtSask''
Web.
* "Cicansky: Biography & Life Story." ''Regina Clay: World in the Making, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Virtual Museum Canada.'

* Long, Timothy. "A Comprehensible World: The Work of Cicansky, Thauberger, Yuristy and Fafard." ''Regina Clay: World in the Making, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Virtual Museum Canada.'

* University of Regina Archives and Special Collections. Vic Cicansky Fonds. https://www.uregina.ca/library/services/archives/collections/art-architecture/cicansky.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Cicansky, Victor 1935 births 2025 deaths 20th-century Canadian sculptors Canadian male sculptors 20th-century Canadian male artists Artists from Regina, Saskatchewan Members of the Order of Canada Members of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit University of California, Davis alumni Nut artists