Kurelek, a Biography

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

William Kurelek was a difficult and complex man, dedicated to his religion and to his art. A prey to the lifelong and painful resentment of an unhappy boyhood, he saw himself as the victim of a cold and unsympathetic, indeed bullying, father, who would never appreciate the artistic talent of his dreamy, wispy eldest son, and the neglected child of a mother wholly occupied by ceaseless, exhausting labor, who declined to take his part against his stern father.

Kurelek himself, as is evidenced by his copious biographical writings, quite failed to appreciate the difficulties his parents faced and the sacrifices they had made on his behalf. He himself proved to be no warmer or supportive a parent than the father he criticized so bitterly, and the burden of rearing a large family was thrown upon his wife while he painted.

And how he painted! Furiously, sometimes as many as three canvases in a day. From early youth the prolific artist gave his all to his work, revealing his nostalgia for the early life he claimed to have found so distressing; the period of severe mental instability, most of it spent in hospital in England; his travels around the world; and his devotion to his own huge, infinitely varied country. But always, first and foremost, his ardent Roman Catholicism filled both his paintings and his writings, coloring his every thought and creative work.

His was to be a short life, though crowded and crowned by public recognition. Although only 50 years old when he died, Kurelek had already become possibly the best-known of Canadian artists. His work has been compared to that of Pieter Brueghel for its peasant vigor and vitality. Patricia Morley’s biography of this difficult, elusive, not-always-likeable man is a convincing portrait of troubled genius struggling to come to terms with a life that somehow never measured up to his other-worldly expectations.