Maxwell Bates

Born in Calgary in 1906, Maxwell Bates began painting at an early age, and as a young man he quickly rejected the academic art tradition that dominated the city at the time. In 1931 he made the decision to leave Calgary for England, where he found commercial success as an artist before the war.

Bates’s exposure to contemporary art in Europe, and a pivotal 1949 trip to study with German Expressionist Max Beckmann at the Brooklyn Museum deeply influenced his work. The paintings featured here showcase Bates's distinctive Canadian Expressionist style—marked by distorted perspectives, flattened forms, and bold colour—used to convey his unique vision of the Canadian landscape and its people. 

His paintings have been exhibited across Canada, including at the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery, and continue to resonate for their raw, uncompromising vision of human experience. Though long under appreciated in Canada, Bates received an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary in 1971 and was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1980, just months before his death on September 14, 1980.