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Bertram Brooker

Work

Bertram brooker, Think of The Earth; Nonfiction: T.B. Robertson, T.B.R.--newspaper pieces.

Bertram Brooker's exhibition at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto in 1927, was the first non-objective exhibition of its kind in Canada.

Bertram Brooker (Toronto: Macmillan, 1929), p. 184. Brooker, a personal friend of Voaden’s shared many of Voaden's views about Canadian art, nationalism, and ideals of unity of being and of spiritual affirmation.

Born in Croydon, England Bertram Brooker moved with his parents to Portage la Prairie in 1905 and later to Toronto in 1921. He acquired a reputation as a writer, painter, musician, and poet. Brooker was a charter member of the Canadian Group of Painters and he won the Governor General's Award for fiction in 1936 for "Think of the Earth". Bertram Brooker is an artist of several mediums and is a key example of liberation and innovation in the extensive history of Canadian art. Through a diversity of artistic interpretations and styles, Brooker captures both spiritual and commercial perspectives. He preferred realism during the late '20s and early '30s. It was during this time that he was influenced by LeMoin FitzGerald, a friend of Brooker's and contemporary artist.

Bertram Brooker wasn't as well known as some great artists, like Emily Carr, he was just as good. At the age of 17, he worked in the kitchens and in the time keepers office of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. He then managed a movie theatre in Neepawa and also did some newspaper work in Portage and Winnipeg. In 1921, he moved to Toronto and became a freelance journalist and got into advertising. In 1923, Brooker joined the Arts and Letters Club, where he met Lawren Harris and other members from "The Group of Seven". He admired them for "Liberating young artists from the stuffy tradition of strict realism". In 1927, Bertram Brooker became the first artist in Canada to exhibit abstract art. ... Bertram Brookers' style of art was mainly abstract but he did realistic works too. For medium, he used oil, water color, pencil, ink, and print.

Bertram Brooker had sent off a painting of nudes for exhibit—two nudes in one painting.

Bertram Brooker's historical 1931 essay about how art galleries should stop being prudes when it comes to nudes.