Œuvres d'art

Molly Lamb Bobak 1920-2014


It is Molly’s paintings of crowds for which she is most famous. Bobak sees these events as aesthetic experiences. She is fascinated by the dynamic nature of a crowd which is never the same from one moment to another. She is preoccupied with giving order to the sense of perpetual movement and change.


“It is an interest I have had ever since I was a kid. I simply love gatherings, minglings, not so much sports although I used to love going to baseball games and seeing crowds. I think that I rationalize it - this is really true - I have been thinking about this and I say that it’s like little ants crawling, the sort of insignificance and yet the beauty of people all getting together.” (From an Interview conducted by the director of the Beaverbrook Gallery, Ian Lumsden in Fredericton, N.B., on August 12, 1977).


Her background, credentials and honours have been well documented recently by the Art Canada Institute (see https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/molly-lamb-bobak). In 1993, The McKenzie Art Gallery in Regina put together an outstanding retrospective of her work and a well illustrated catalogue.

Molly Lamb Bobak was an artistically intelligent painter. She had the same familiarity with the colour theories expounded most notably by Hans Hoffmann as did Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Jack Bush and William Perehudoff. With an understanding and respect of contemporary art theories, like Dorothy Knowles, Joe Plaskett and Takao Tanabe, Molly’s painterly path led to resolve compositions that one would describe as figurative. She acknowledges some of her important influences include Sam Francis, Jack Shadbolt and David Milne. (See her interview with Ian G. Lumsden in the catalogue, The Queen Comes To New Brunswick: Paintings and Drawings by Molly Lamb Bobak, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery)

Molly Lamb Bobak enjoyed a lengthy career during which she became one of the most celebrated artists of her generation. Representing her at our family’s original Montreal gallery, Walter Klinkhoff Gallery, regularly for more than 40 years, gave us the luxury to know her and to distribute her artwork to art collectors from coast to coast.


https://www.klinkhoff.ca/blog/8360/