Artist of the Day, July 13, 2026 : Guido Molinari, a Québecois painter, (#2577)

 Guido Molinari OC RCA L.L. D. ( 1933 –  2004) was a Canadian artist, known nationally and internationally for his serial abstract paintings and their dynamic interplay of colors and focus on modular shapes. His Stripe series is especially celebrated. Molinari himself described their effect - and the effect of all his paintings - as creating a new kind of fictional space "because it happens in the mind and yet also involves the totality of perception".

Molinari was born in Montréal, Québec into a family originally from the Abruzzo region in Italy. He was the son of Charles Molinari, a musician with the Orchestre des concerts symphoniques de Montréal and first president of the Québec Musicians' Association; and of Evelyne Dini, the daughter of a sculptor so his childhood was culturally rich. He began painting at age 13 and later enrolled at the School of the Art Association of Montréal, studying with Marian Dale Scott and Gordon Webber. A year later he contracted tuberculosis. While he was convalescing, he studied existentialism, reading authors such as Sartre, Camus, Piaget and Nietzsche. He did not complete his formal training in art but found his own path.

Early in his career, Molinari read a 1955 article about Jackson Pollock dripping paint onto canvas and went to New York to paint abstractly. He then returned to Montréal where he held his first solo exhibition at L'Échourie, founded the Galerie L'Actuelle with Fernande Saint-Martin, his future wife and was one of the founding members of The Non-Figurative Artists' Association of Montréal in 1956. Between 1963 and 1969, he created hard edge paintings consisting of color in vertical bands of equal width placed on a flat picture plane called the Stripe series. The National Gallery of Canada, acquired a canvas from the series.

Molinari was selected by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim International Award 1964 exhibition. His paintings were seen in New York, Honolulu, Berlin, Ottawa and Buenos Aires. In 1965, his works appeared in The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York along with works by artists such as Frank Stella. They were also seen in The Deceived Eye in Fort Worth, Texas; and in a fourth show, a New York solo exhibition at East Hampton Gallery. His work was described by reviewers in glowing terms as "Pop spelled 'Pow!'— in these handsome paintings the message comes across visually".

Molinari taught for 27 years at Sir George Williams University and Concordia University, retiring in 1997. In 2004, Concordia recognized him with a posthumous honorary doctorate.

In 1997, he established the 'Molinari Quartet' through the Molinari Foundation, a group that has been active now for twenty-five plus years.

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Guido Molinari or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

 Guido Molinari

Abstraction, 1953

Sans titre, 1954

Sans titre, 1954

Sans titre (from the Noir et blanc or Calligraphies series), 1955

 Sans titre, 1955

Angle noir, 1956

Noir/Blanc, 1956

Sans titre (from the Noir et blanc series), 1956

Sans titre (from the Calligraphies series), 1958

Equilibrium, 1959

Contrepoint, 1960

Sans titre, Octobre 1962

Parallèles bleues, 1963

Sans titre, 1963

Espace orange-bleu, 1964

Mutation Rhythmique, 1964

Mutation vert et rouge (left) and Bi-sérielle vert-bleu (right), 1964-67

Mutation rythmique rouge-orangé, 1965

Bi-sérielle vert-rouge, 1967

Sériel bleu-ocre, 1967

Sériel vert-violet, 1968

Structure, 1970

Opposition triangulaire, 1971

Structure triangulaire gris-brun, 1972

Triangulaire jaune-orange, 1974

Deux marrons, 1992

Continuum rouge et bleu (from the Continuum series), 1998

R.M. Schafer's Seventh String Quartet, 1998

Sans titre, 1999