Exhibition runs May 28 – June 21, 2015.
This exhibition features prints by Canadian artist Dalla Husband (1899-1944) made during her time in Paris through the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1899, Husband grew up in Vernon, British Columbia on her family’s ranch on Lake Kalamalka. Her parents moved to Canada from England around the time of her birth to seek new career opportunities, which eventually brought them to the west coast in 1907. Her father, Major Herbert Husband, was a rancher who also served two mayoral terms in Vernon prior to his premature and tragic death in 1912. Husband had the luxury of travelling while growing up, visiting relatives in Winnipeg at the age of 13 with her father, as well as going to England twice to visit her grandmother. At the time of her grandmother’s death, Husband received an inheritance, which she chose to spend on a courageous move to pursue her career as an artist overseas in Paris. When she first arrived in 1924, she worked with printmaker Joseph Hecht in his studio where she learned the basics of printmaking, however when the British artist Stanley William Hayter moved to Paris in 1926, Husband sought after his advice and expertise. Husband and fellow female artist Alice Carr de Creeft approached Hayter for further lessons in printmaking and attempting to deter them from asking again, he said that he would only work with them if they managed to bring two more students. Accordingly, Husband and de Creeft found two additional students and Hayter moved to his own studio down the street from Hecht’s and began the workshop soon to be known as Atelier 17.
Guest Curated by Eva Tweedie, UBC Curatorial Studies MA Candidate
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.
