Painters Eleven

Painters Eleven (variant names Painters 11 or P11) was a collective of abstract artists active in Canada from 1953 to 1960.

Since the 1920s, artists in English Canada had been heavily influenced by the landscape painting of the Group of Seven, the Canadian Group of Painters and the Eastern Group of Painters. The Canadian public often regarded modernist movements such as Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism as bizarre and subversive. The acquisition of modernist paintings - even Impressionist works – by public galleries was invariably a source of controversy. In Quebec, Paul-Émile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle spearheaded the modernist collective known as Les Automatistes, which began having exhibitions as early as 1941. However, their artistic influence was not quickly felt in English Canada, or indeed much beyond Montreal.

In 1953, eleven abstract painters from Ontario — Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén, Hortense Gordon, Tom Hodgson, Alexandra Luke, Jock Macdonald, Ray Mead, Kazuo Nakamura, William Ronald, Harold Town and Walter Yarwood — dubbed themselves Painters Eleven and held their first exhibition at the Roberts Gallery in Toronto in 1954. The exhibition, arranged by Jack Bush, was the first major commercial exhibition of abstract expressionist art in Toronto. Unlike the Group of Seven whose members' work evolved along parallel lines, Painters Eleven shared no common artistic vision apart from a commitment to abstraction. This was reflected in the diversity of the group's members. Decades separated the youngest from the eldest, and before they sold their paintings they made their living as freelance commercial artists or worked in advertising and as art teachers. Two had studied at summer schools conducted by the American abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and William Ronald "sat in" on his classes, while others were graduates of the Ontario College of Art, and still others were self-taught. Within the group itself, the artistic center of gravity seems to have been Oscar Cahén, a gifted European émigré who became well known as an illustrator for a number of national magazines. At least three members of the group - Bush, Ronald, and Town - earned international reputations.

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