Kathleen Jean Munn is recognized today as a pioneer of modern art in Canada, though she remained on the periphery of the Canadian art scene during her lifetime.
15 Facts About Kathleen Munn
1.
2.
Kathleen Munn imagined conventional subjects in a radically new visual vocabulary as she combined the traditions of European art with modern art studies in New York.
3.
Kathleen Munn stopped painting about 1939 and when she died in 1974 at age 87, she was unaware that her long-held hope for "a possible future for my work" was about to become reality.
4.
Kathleen Jean Munn was born to a middle-class family in Toronto in 1887 and was the youngest of six children.
5.
Kathleen Munn's family owned and ran a jewellery store at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor, and the family lived in the apartment above.
6.
Kathleen Munn's family was extremely supportive of her career and paid for her art education in both New York and Philadelphia.
7.
Kathleen Munn developed a devotion to international modernism and by 1920 "her style had evolved from the loose colourful brushwork of Impressionism to the more hard-edge geometric fragmentation of natural form".
8.
Kathleen Munn kept extensive notebooks of her studies at the Art Students League, which continued on and off until the late 1920s.
9.
Kathleen Munn read constantly and kept extensive notes on art theory, philosophy, literature, and music, including Synchromism, Cubism, and Theosophy, embracing an intellectual and spiritual approach to art.
10.
Kathleen Munn was influenced by the writings of Jay Hambidge and his theory of dynamic symmetry, which was instrumental in the development of her Passion Series.
11.
Kathleen Munn sought to convey spiritual truths within a formal order "like her colleague and admirer Lawren Harris".
12.
Kathleen Munn was invited to contribute to the 1928 Group of Seven exhibition and submitted her work Composition.
13.
Frederick Housser wrote that Kathleen Munn was "probably the only painter in Canada whose canvases show an interest in cubism", which did not suit the popular styles of painting in Toronto at the time she was practicing and exhibiting.
14.
Kathleen Munn died on in Toronto, Ontario at 87 years of age.
15.
Kathleen Munn's work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.