Maxwell Bates, Kindergarten, 1965 AGGV 82.7 view in database

Maxwell Bates is Canada's premier Expressionist artist of the mid-20th century.

This Site primarily explores Bates's insights into the human condition and his extraordinary inventiveness in that portrayal. "My wish has always been to reveal underlying universal qualities in the topical and particular." His art - of prairie people, workers, cocktail parties, odalisques, fortune tellers and allegorical works of beggar kings and Secrets of the Grand Hotel - is a dedication to this aim. His images of prairie people, which he started producing in 1946, seem to be prototypes for his later puppet and scarecrow works. Together they suggest man is manipulated by unpredictable and powerful outside forces over which he has no control.

Bates's interest in directness, intensity and simplicity served his Expressionism well, as did his social conscience and life-long interest in the relationship between appearances and reality.

Calgary, Canada

During this "very important time in my life" in Calgary, Maxwell Bates explored his penchant for drawing, pattern, Fauvist colour, and figurative and non-objective art. At the same time he developed an interest in portraying the human condition. His artistic influences during this period were: Daumier; Studio 1904 - 1914; Goya; Velasquez; Degas; Toulouse-Lautrec; Van Gogh; Gauguin and Cezanne; reading Russian novels; Roger Fry's Vision and Design and Clive Bell. By 1929 Bates transcended these influences and created proto-Expressionist figurative art.

London, England

Maxwell Bates arrived in London during the depression in 1931 at the age of 25. He was soon invited by his commercial art gallery dealer Mrs. Lucy Wertheim to join and exhibit with a group of the most promising British artists in their 20s, including Barbara Hepworth and Victor Pasmore. In 1934 and 1937, Bates exhibited in solo shows.

Bates's art of the 1930s is stylistically diverse, but an Expressionist style is discernible by 1937. Not many works from the 1930s are known, but this web site is pleased to display several from Salford, U.K. and Auckland, New Zealand; gifts from Mrs. Wertheim to institutions in these cities.

In London Bates saw about 2000 art shows. The art of Ed Burra and Paul Nash interested him, as did the ideas of Herbert Read.

During this period, Bates also pursued his interests in Japanese prints, astrology and horoscopes.

Prisoner of War, Germany

The three surviving works from this period on this web site - including the memorable Hotel Eichenbaum (site for Hell's Kitchen) on the First Forced March, and preparatory drawings of scenes from Camp - are a small reflection of Bates's total creative output while a Prisoner of War. (Please see an entry from his Prisoner of War Notebook under Writings.) Overall, Bates's forced manual labor at the salt mine seven days per week for five years, mostly on the Transport Gang, increased his understanding of men at work. Bates rendered pencil portraits of fellow prisoners and, as he recounts, "My Prisoner of War experience intensified my art...because I had been thinking so much about it all the time."

Calgary, Canada

Maxwell Bates's first serious artworks on his return dealt with people of the Canadian prairies such as in Prairie Woman, 1947, a Western Canadian icon. Puppet Woman, 1948 with its universal message and intensity of expression ushers in Bates as a profound post-war Expressionist. "Man is manipulated by outside forces over which he has no control."

His subsequent developments - taking a course from Max Beckmann for four months and admiring Paul Klee in New York in 1949-50; conducting pioneering work in colour lithography with John Snow; a growing interest in puppets and scarecrows/crucifixions; producing landscapes and Facet and Tachiste paintings; and creating monoprints that incorporate imprinting doilies and coloured ink washes in 1961 - reveal a very complex Western Canadian artist exploring modern art at every opportunity within the confines of his busy architectural practice.

In 1952, Maxwell Bates suffered great personal loss with the death of his first wife, May Watson Bates.

Victoria, Canada

In Victoria, now just an artist and writer having retired from architecture, Bates thrived creating his witty series Artists At Work and his most literary series The Secrets of the Grand Hotel. The Secrets of the Grand Hotel as a collection holds a parallel structure to, and is intended to accompany his multifaceted "novel" Vermicelli.

He experimented more with materials, technique, and compositions, and developed his themes: beggar kings, cocktail parties and fortune tellers and the enduring civilian prisoners, prairie people and puppets.

Reaching his peak as he sought after "directness, simplicity and intensity", Bates created the masterpieces Kindergarten 1965, Saanich Inlet 1965, Beautiful B.C. 1966, Farm People 1967 and Odalisque 1970. Immeasurably enriching Victoria's cultural life with his inventiveness, Bates became a beloved member of the Limners, a "convivial group of artists who meet socially and also arrange exhibitions as a group". The Limners took their name from the travelling European artists that earned their way painting portraits and illuminating signs. They adopted the rune for "humankind" as their logo.

Bates was a force in the Canadian cultural consciousness until his death in 1980, and remains influential today.

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