Abstract Landscape in Orange by Michael Forster

Born in Calcutta, India, he was educated at La Martiniere College, Calcutta; Lancing College, England, and studied art in England under Bernard Meninsky and William Roberts; at the Colarossi, Paris and also in New York. He came to Canada in 1928. A writer as well, of narrative fiction, his articles have appeared in several magazines in England, France, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and the United States. He won a prize for the year’s best first short story (1955) and of his stories performed by the Warner Brothers’ “77 Sunset Strip” won the TV “Emmy” award for best script in 1959. He wrote a weekly column for the “Montreal Standard” in 1950, entitled “Art Notes” and later “Speaking of Art”; also articles for the Mexico City press, and was an official Canadian observer for the First Biennial Exhibition in Mexico City and wrote a covering paper for the National Gallery of Canada. In painting, he worked in objective and non-objective styles, using as media: ink, ink and crayon, and litho crayon. He exhibited in Toronto at the Picture Loan Society in the spring of 1941 and several other times. During the war, he worked in the Merchant Navy on the Jamaica Run in 1943 and in October of 1944 became a member of the R.C.N.V.R., where he came an official war artist. He arrived in England in 1944, where he had a studio and was then assigned to U-Boat pens in Brest and returned to Canada in July of 1945. He was posted to H.M.C.S. Bytown in Ottawa.

After his discharge from the Navy, he held a one-man show at the Photographic Stores Ltd., Ottawa, in which the catalogue for the exhibition mentioned a trip to the Virgin Islands following his stint in the navy. In 1947, he held another exhibition at “The Gallery!” in Ottawa. He was engaged in making brightly-coloured paintings for cotton garments in 1951, which stirred the interest of fashion and art critics. Forster’s work appeared in Paul Duval’s “Canadian Drawings and Prints” (1952) and “Canadian Water Colour Painting” (1954). His other one-man shows include those at: Art Gallery of Toronto; Hart House; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Instituto Allende, Mexico; Galeria Proteo, Mexico City; Galeria Antonio Sousa, Mexico City. He worked on murals at the Politecnico and taught techniques at the Universidad Ibero-Americana, the Jesuit University in Mexico City.

In 1960, the Government of Mexico presented 100 of his works in the Palace of Fine Arts in the Capital and the catalogue for the show was written by the eminent German critic and art historian Paul Westheim, who noted, “…By means of colour, he knows how to give form to a whole scale of emotions and feelings, blurred in the majority of men by the impressions that influence them from without. Sorrow and anguish, joy and ecstasy, conscious and unconscious, express themselves in these combinations of colour….”

During his exhibit at the Robertson Galleries in 1965, Mr. W.Q. Ketchum of the “Ottawa Journal” commented, “…He has a magnificent color sense and his brushwork is controlled and highly individualistic. Many of his canvases have a luminous quality….” At the request of a member of the Centennial Commission, Ottawa, Forster wrote a directive paper concerning the requirements for a standard contract to be used by the Government of Canada in commissioning artists to work on federal buildings as part of the Centennial celebration in 1967.

Literature Source:
"A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume 1: A-F, 5th Edition, Revised and Expanded", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1997