Lawren Harris Format: Paperback

Presented for the first time in this beautiful, genre-crossing collection is Lawren Harris’s original book of poems and 16 color images of the artist’s early urban painting. In 1922, while the Group of Seven was emerging as a national phenomenon, Harris published his only book of poems—Contrasts—the first modernist exploration of Canadian urban space in verse. He also wandered the streets of Toronto, sketching and creating a powerful set of city paintings. With a 14-page walking tour of Toronto that includes historical and biographical tidbits, this book contains sections of further readings in relation to Harris, the Group of Seven, Toronto and the Ward, and other Toronto walks, more than 65 questions for discussion, and a complete listing of the paintings that provides details on size, medium, and current location. Unlike any other book on Harris, this edition offers a new view of Harris’s career before the Group of Seven while presenting an exciting window into city life at the turn of the century.

Lawren Harris was a painter, best known as a member of the Group of Seven who pioneered a distinctly Canadian painting style in the early 20th century. Gregory Betts is an associate professor of English at Brock University and the director at the Centre for Canadian Studies. He has published and edited numerous books, including Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations, The Transnational Agenda of Lewis and Pound’s Avant-Garde, and A Postmodern Decadence in Canadian Sound and Visual Poetry.