Lawren Harris
American, 1885-1970
- Names
Harris, Lawren
Lawrence Harris
Lawren Harris
- Born
Ontario 1885
- Died
Vancouver 1970
- Occupation or Type
printmaker
lithographer
poster designer
Northwest artist
- Bio
Lawren Harris was a founding member and the acknowledged leader of the Group of Seven, an association of Canadian artists that endeavored to depict their country's landscape in a new, more genuine, and distinctly Canadian way. He wrote the manifesto for the Group's first exhibition in Toronto in 1920. "Art must grow and flower in the land," he stated, "before the country will be a real home for its people." Harris traveled with various members of the Group on sketching expeditions to locations in eastern and western Canada; each summer from 1926 to 1929 he explored the Canadian Rockies. He settled in Vancouver in 1940, by which time he was producing only abstract pieces, works that had a potent effect on artists there.
Artist biography reproduced with permission of Katharine Harmon, author of The Pacific Northwest Landscape: A Painted History.
- Gender
Male