March 10th 2010
Gabor Szilasi has won the Governor General’s Award for Visual, Arts, one of eight Canadian artists this year.
The others are: Haida sculptor Robert Davidson, filmmaker André Forcier, painter Rita Letendre, video artist Tom Sherman, and painter Claude Tousignant. Glass sculptor Ione Thorkelsson won the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts, while Terry Ryan received the Outstanding Contribution Award as long-time general manager of West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset, Nunavut and director of Dorset Fine Arts in Toronto.
For more information about the Award, see the Canada Council’s news release.
Gabor Szilasi exhibition at National Gallery of Canada
Gabor Szilasi was awarded the prestigious Prix du Québec on November 6th 2009 “in recognition of his exceptional body of work spanning the past 50 years.” More information about this award can be found on the website of Concordia University here.
The Canada-Hungary Educational Foundation has arranged for a guided tour of the exhibition lead by Mr Szilasi himself. This takes place on December 3rd 2009 at 5.15pm. Anyone interested in reserving a spot for this tour is asked to write to editor@hungarianpresence.ca. Only individuals who are registered can participate.
Well-known Montreal photographer Gabor Szilasi who came to Canada after the 1956 uprising is being recognized with a one-man show at the National Gallery of Canada which opens on October 8th and runs till January 17th. On October 9th at 12.15 pm David Harris, the exhibition’s curator and Associate Professor of at the School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Toronto is doing a talk about why and how he came to put the exhibit together. This will be followed at 1.30 pm by a presentation by Mr Szilasi himself about his work. Mr Szilasi was one of the fifty Canadians of Hungarian origin whose portrait by V Tony Hauser was included in the National Arts Centre’s Hungary 50th anniversary project “New Lives” in 2006. See our webpage: New Lives Exhibit.
Gabor Szilasi’s photo exhibit at the National Gallery received lots of notice in the press. Here is one item from the Ottawa Citizen’s Arts Editor, Peter Simpson: The Ottawa Citizen.
Exhibition information:
Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) –
Gabor Szilasi: The Eloquence of the Everyday
9 OCTOBER 2009- 17 JANUARY 2010
Contemporary art galleries, National Gallery of Canada
Organized by the Musée d’art de Joliette in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada.
The National Gallery describes the exhibition this way:
Over the course of the last 50 years, Gabor Szilasi (b. Budapest, 1928,) has created one of Canada’s significant and influential bodies of photographic work, comprising environmental portraits, domestic, commercial, and urban views of Montreal and Budapest, and images of rural Quebec. His photographs have been sustained by an unwavering belief in the humanistic and documentary value of the medium. This exhibition uncovers the essence of Szilasi’s artistic vision through his observations of urban and rural life and his recordings of the connections between culture and community. How people present themselves to the photographer and furnish their homes, as well as the character of their surroundings, all contribute to the creation of an intricate social and historical record.
For more detailed information on the National Gallery exhibit and a video interview with Gabor Szilasi, see the National Gallery’s newsletter.