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Marian Mildred Dale Scott

Marian Mildred Dale Scott, painter (b at Montréal 26 June 1906; d at Montreal 28 Nov 1993). For 50 years Scott experimented with fresh art forms, reaching for symmetry, often through repetition of small abstract forms.
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Marian Scott, 1939, oil on canvas (courtesy Edmonton Art Gallery).

Marian Mildred Dale Scott

Marian Mildred Dale Scott, painter (b at Montréal 26 June 1906; d at Montreal 28 Nov 1993). For 50 years Scott experimented with fresh art forms, reaching for symmetry, often through repetition of small abstract forms. After study at the École des beaux-arts, Montréal, and the Slade School of Art, London, she painted landscapes, later plant life, buds and pods, organized geometrically. A series of human faces, influenced by Modigliani, show strong linear forms set ambiguously in a background of heavy black paint. During the Depression years, Scott depicted the people of urban Montréal, up against machines, bureaucracy and hard times, showing them in pictures like Tenants and Escalator. She taught 1935-38 with Fritz BRANDTNER at the Children's Art Centre set up by Norman Bethune, and joined the Contemporary Arts Soc in 1939. In 1941 she gave a one-man show at Boston's Grace Horne Gallery, and from 1948-77 held 9 solo exhibitions at Queen's U; Dominion Gallery, Montréal; Laing Gallery, Toronto; L'atelier Renée le Sieur, Québec City; and the McGill Art Education Department. In 1983 she exhibited in London, Ont, with the show "Visions and Victories: 10 Canadian Women Artists, 1914-1945." She was married to poet and lawyer F.R. SCOTT.