Ottawa's Blue Barn Group:
Mid-Century Modern Art
Oct 3-13
Reception: October 3, 2-5pm
RSVP your attendance to responses@wallspacegallery.ca
Presales are now live, in-person, e-mail and via phone at 613-729-0003. If you would like to preview an artwork before collecting it, please contact the gallery at info@wallspacegallery.ca
Join us for a tour by Denise Troitter @ Wall Space Gallery, 1090 Bank Street
Monday, October 5 at 1 PM
Wednesday, October 7 at 2 PM
Saturday, October 10 at 2 PM
VIEW COLLECTION
In the 1950s and 1960s, Ottawa was not yet widely regarded as a centre for modern art. Yet beneath the city’s official and institutional identity, a lively community of artists was experimenting with new forms, materials, and ideas.
One of the places where this energy gathered was the Blue Barn Gallery. Led by artist Duncan de Kergommeaux, the gallery became a meeting place for artists and audiences interested in the possibilities of contemporary art. Its importance lay not simply in the exhibitions it presented, but in the conversations it helped create.
The artists connected with the Blue Barn did not form a single school or style. Their work ranged across painting, sculpture, collage, abstraction, and figuration. Gerald Trottier, Victor Tolgesy, James Boyd, David Partridge, Norman Takeuchi, Georges de Niverville, Harold Town, Toni Onley, Art Price, and Duncan de Kergommeaux each brought a distinctive approach to the changing language of postwar art.
What connects them is less a shared aesthetic than a shared moment. They were working at a time when artists across Canada were reconsidering the traditions they had inherited. Ottawa, too, was developing a stronger sense of itself as an artistic community. The Blue Barn offered a place where local artists could encounter one another, where new work could be shown, and where audiences could engage with ideas that were not yet familiar.
The gallery also helped connect Ottawa to a broader Canadian art network. Exhibitions and relationships extended beyond the city, linking artists here with developments in Toronto, Montreal, and elsewhere. Contemporary art was becoming less a distant phenomenon and more a conversation in which Ottawa could participate. In retrospect, the Blue Barn stands as an important site in the city’s modern-art history.
Looking back, the significance of this period lies not only in the individual works, but also in the culture surrounding them. Artists made space for experimentation. They found audiences. They challenged one another. And, perhaps most importantly, they helped establish the conditions for a continuing contemporary art community in Ottawa.
Wall Space Gallery presents works by Duncan de Kergommeaux, James Boyd, Gerald Trottier, Georges de Niverville, and Victor Tolgesy, offering a focused view of this formative period in Ottawa’s modern art history.
Seen today, the work offers more than a portrait of mid-century modernism. It records a moment when Ottawa’s artistic identity was taking shape.
Curator
Haruka Toyoda
