David Sorensen
Canadian, 1937–2011
Born in 1937, West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Died 2011, Montreal, QC
Through his painterly modern compositions, celebrated Canadian painter David Sorensen sought to “give voice to the inner reality.” In the paintings from his last years, Sorensen offers solutions to the nature of abstraction – wresting the horizon from pure form and brilliant colour.
Born in Vancouver in 1937, Sorensen studied at UBC and the Vancouver School of Art under Arthur Erickson, Bill Reid and Jack Shadbolt. Shadbolt, who in turn had studied Hans Hoffman, invited American art critic Clement Greenberg to the school to discuss abstraction including the work of Rothko, Pollock and Kline. These influences helped shape Sorensen’s painterly approach to non-figurative art. In 1964, the artist moved to Montreal where he held teaching positions at the Montreal Museum School of Art, the Saidye Bronfman Centre and later Bishop’s University.
Over Sorensen’s long career he exhibited widely across Canada and in Switzerland, France, Italy, Japan, China and the US. In 2005, the Musee du Bas Saint-Laurent in Riviere-du-Loup, QC curated a 45 year retrospective of the artist’s work. In 1996, Sorensen was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. His work is held in private, corporate and public collections including the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton and more.
Submitted by Oeno Gallery
