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The Life and Art of George Fertig (Mother Tongue $36.95)
Mona Fertig, who co-managed The Literary Storefront in Vancouver from 1978 to 1982, has always been distressed by the unfairness of the visual arts world. Growing up in Vancouver, she watched how her father, George Fertig, a gifted and dedicated oil painter, never got his due. How did Jack Shadbolt get so many one-man shows at the Vancouver Art Gallery?
To retrieve and bolster the reputations of significant B.C. artists whose names and works have been unjustly overlooked, Fertig has undertaken a bold publishing series within her Mother Tongue Publishing imprint from Salt Spring Island. Hers is a Quixotic and expensive mission that has won her more admiration than she has ever gained as a poet for her own books.
After the first two well-received books in the series about sculptor David Marshall, painter Frank Molnar, sculptor and printmaker Jack Hardman and painter LeRoy Jensen, she has turned her hand to writing and publishing an illustrated volume at the heart of the matter, The Life and Art of George Fertig (Mother Tongue $36.95). Her appreciative study looks at her father as a painter, a Jungian, a socialist, a symbolist and a perpetual outsider.
In this excerpt, Mona Fertig describes life among artists in post-war Vancouver, when her parents met at the Ferguson Point Tea Room, and when local artists such as George Fertig were redolent with hope.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Vancouver Art Gallery held popular juried quarterly and annual exhibitions, which any artist could enter. Its policies supported the plethora of local artists (600 in 1949) in ways that were considered naive and unprogressive in the 1950s, but in retrospect seem nostalgically and indiscriminately supportive of Vancouver artists.
From the soon-to-be-famous to the now-forgotten, artists often had their first exposure there. My father, George Fertig, participated in as many exhibitions as he could.
Born in Alberta in 1915, George Fertig was a member of the infamous Trail Mine Mill Union in the '30s and travelled to Mexico in the '40s. Carl G. Jung and Morris Graves were important influences. He moved to Vancouver in 1941.
In 1948, my mother, Evelyn Luxa, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, moved to Vancouver.
She was a gorgeous, dark-haired, olive-skinned woman with an easy laugh, and her talent for having fun provided quite a contrast to George's seriousness. When she arrived in Vancouver, she lived downtown at 997 Dunsmuir at the YWCA and worked as a receptionist while taking night classes at the Vancouver School of Art. Evelyn also read tea leaves and cards at the Y to earn extra money.
My parents first met at a tea house, a former ammunition bunker at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park. During the war, the building had been used as an army base, and the whole shore was armed. The Parks Board was anxious to get rid of the ammunition bunker after the war, so they rented it out to Jack Southworth, from the Vancouver School of Art, and his girlfriend. The couple opened a summer tea house in June of 1947 and lived in the apartment above. Their close friends included artist Joy Zemel Long and photographer Jack Long.
The tea house was a "swank restaurant,"; remembers Jennifer Hobbs, who graduated from the VSA that year, hoping to become an interior designer. She recalled wheeling a trolley around to customers with tea, milk, buns and scones in a copper-covered basket. Evelyn worked there for a short while. The back of the tea house had a studio space where the artists and students gathered.
Fred Amess, director of the VSA, and other artists, including George, hung their work on the walls, and jewelry and pottery was offered for sale. Joy called George a "beautiful painter"; who always wore corduroy.
George was often at the tea house gallery whenever he and John Ahrens [of Ahren's Books], came in from salvaging logs around Third Beach, with John's boat. Unemployed after the war, they sold the logs to salvage companies.
In the late summer of 1948, George showed Third Beach, listed for $50, in the Stanley Park in Pictures exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He completed English Bay in 1949. The painting is filled with the youthful optimism of a man experiencing the end of the war, an artist on the verge of becoming himself.
Every Sunday for many years, dedicated artists, as well as novice painters, would pack up their sturdy easels, brushes, paints and canvas and trudge off to Stanley Park to paint and show their work. I remember seeing them there on weekends when I was a young girl. Marlene Flater told me that's where she first saw George Fertig's art in the early 1950s:
"His paintings just blew me away! I'd dabbled a bit, and when I got home, I tried to duplicate your dad's image, which had a moon in it, on a small six-inch oil painting so I could remember what I saw. Years later, when I was working at the Vancouver Sun, I invited about four or five of the ladies over to my place in Kitsilano on York Street...
"Your mother was one of the women who came over; she lived close by. When she saw the Fertig imitation, she pointed to it and exclaimed, 'What's that?' So I told her the story, and a few days later she invited me over to meet your dad, and he showed me his paintings.";
In 1949, George moved to 1137 Beach Avenue. He was again listed as an artist in the B.C. Directory. Evelyn was listed at 161 Nelson Street, a 23-minute walk away.
I'm not sure when my Dad and Mom began going out together. At first, she was only one of several girlfriends. She told me that she would often bring him cheese sandwiches because he was so poor. George would recite poetry to her, and they would often walk the West End beaches, sit on a log and watch the sunset. They were married in 1953.
George Fertig died in 1983. His paintings were rarely exhibited but many are held in private collections.
A George Fertig Retrospective runs from June 1 to July 11 at the Burnaby Art Gallery. 978-1-896949-06-2
[BCBW 2010]
To retrieve and bolster the reputations of significant B.C. artists whose names and works have been unjustly overlooked, Fertig has undertaken a bold publishing series within her Mother Tongue Publishing imprint from Salt Spring Island. Hers is a Quixotic and expensive mission that has won her more admiration than she has ever gained as a poet for her own books.
After the first two well-received books in the series about sculptor David Marshall, painter Frank Molnar, sculptor and printmaker Jack Hardman and painter LeRoy Jensen, she has turned her hand to writing and publishing an illustrated volume at the heart of the matter, The Life and Art of George Fertig (Mother Tongue $36.95). Her appreciative study looks at her father as a painter, a Jungian, a socialist, a symbolist and a perpetual outsider.
In this excerpt, Mona Fertig describes life among artists in post-war Vancouver, when her parents met at the Ferguson Point Tea Room, and when local artists such as George Fertig were redolent with hope.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Vancouver Art Gallery held popular juried quarterly and annual exhibitions, which any artist could enter. Its policies supported the plethora of local artists (600 in 1949) in ways that were considered naive and unprogressive in the 1950s, but in retrospect seem nostalgically and indiscriminately supportive of Vancouver artists.
From the soon-to-be-famous to the now-forgotten, artists often had their first exposure there. My father, George Fertig, participated in as many exhibitions as he could.
Born in Alberta in 1915, George Fertig was a member of the infamous Trail Mine Mill Union in the '30s and travelled to Mexico in the '40s. Carl G. Jung and Morris Graves were important influences. He moved to Vancouver in 1941.
In 1948, my mother, Evelyn Luxa, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, moved to Vancouver.
She was a gorgeous, dark-haired, olive-skinned woman with an easy laugh, and her talent for having fun provided quite a contrast to George's seriousness. When she arrived in Vancouver, she lived downtown at 997 Dunsmuir at the YWCA and worked as a receptionist while taking night classes at the Vancouver School of Art. Evelyn also read tea leaves and cards at the Y to earn extra money.
My parents first met at a tea house, a former ammunition bunker at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park. During the war, the building had been used as an army base, and the whole shore was armed. The Parks Board was anxious to get rid of the ammunition bunker after the war, so they rented it out to Jack Southworth, from the Vancouver School of Art, and his girlfriend. The couple opened a summer tea house in June of 1947 and lived in the apartment above. Their close friends included artist Joy Zemel Long and photographer Jack Long.
The tea house was a "swank restaurant,"; remembers Jennifer Hobbs, who graduated from the VSA that year, hoping to become an interior designer. She recalled wheeling a trolley around to customers with tea, milk, buns and scones in a copper-covered basket. Evelyn worked there for a short while. The back of the tea house had a studio space where the artists and students gathered.
Fred Amess, director of the VSA, and other artists, including George, hung their work on the walls, and jewelry and pottery was offered for sale. Joy called George a "beautiful painter"; who always wore corduroy.
George was often at the tea house gallery whenever he and John Ahrens [of Ahren's Books], came in from salvaging logs around Third Beach, with John's boat. Unemployed after the war, they sold the logs to salvage companies.
In the late summer of 1948, George showed Third Beach, listed for $50, in the Stanley Park in Pictures exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He completed English Bay in 1949. The painting is filled with the youthful optimism of a man experiencing the end of the war, an artist on the verge of becoming himself.
Every Sunday for many years, dedicated artists, as well as novice painters, would pack up their sturdy easels, brushes, paints and canvas and trudge off to Stanley Park to paint and show their work. I remember seeing them there on weekends when I was a young girl. Marlene Flater told me that's where she first saw George Fertig's art in the early 1950s:
"His paintings just blew me away! I'd dabbled a bit, and when I got home, I tried to duplicate your dad's image, which had a moon in it, on a small six-inch oil painting so I could remember what I saw. Years later, when I was working at the Vancouver Sun, I invited about four or five of the ladies over to my place in Kitsilano on York Street...
"Your mother was one of the women who came over; she lived close by. When she saw the Fertig imitation, she pointed to it and exclaimed, 'What's that?' So I told her the story, and a few days later she invited me over to meet your dad, and he showed me his paintings.";
In 1949, George moved to 1137 Beach Avenue. He was again listed as an artist in the B.C. Directory. Evelyn was listed at 161 Nelson Street, a 23-minute walk away.
I'm not sure when my Dad and Mom began going out together. At first, she was only one of several girlfriends. She told me that she would often bring him cheese sandwiches because he was so poor. George would recite poetry to her, and they would often walk the West End beaches, sit on a log and watch the sunset. They were married in 1953.
George Fertig died in 1983. His paintings were rarely exhibited but many are held in private collections.
A George Fertig Retrospective runs from June 1 to July 11 at the Burnaby Art Gallery. 978-1-896949-06-2
[BCBW 2010]
Submitted on June 3, 2010 in By David.
