Gershon Iskowitz: the Polish-born painter whose early years remain partly unknown
Gershon Iskowitz, a Canadian painter who lived from 1919 to 1988, is the subject of an artist profile published in February 2026 by the Glenbow museum in Calgary, Alberta. The profile describes his painting as having a unique and highly colourful approach.
He was born in Kielce, Poland, on 24 November 1919, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. Before the Second World War he registered at the Warsaw Academy of Art, in 1939, according to Encyclopedia.com.
The war changed the course of his life. The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), in Toronto, says that from 1942 to 1945 he was held in the Nazi camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There he made art on Holocaust themes, which the gallery says helped him cope psychologically. The AGO also says his works and life reflect the loss of his family and his later move to Canada.
His style shifted over time. A description from the online seller Caviar20 says he kept representation in his art for most of the 1950s. By the 1960s, it says, he had built a modest reputation in Toronto and beyond. In a 1960 watercolour, the same seller says, he found abstraction inside nature, with marks that suggest moving foliage and rough rock.
One stretch of his story is still open. An AGO Insider article, titled "The mystery of Gershon Iskowitz," asks what he was doing between 1946 and 1956. The gallery says its archives may help answer that question.
The AGO holds his work. A CBC report from 2007 said the gallery then had 20 of his paintings and 40 works on paper. The gallery also presents the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, and an AGO Insider article features the 2023 winner discussing her works on view.
Readers who want more to read can start with a 1982 book, Gershon Iskowitz: Painter of Light, written by the journalist Adele Freedman. The Gallery Moos website lists it among references to his work.
Caviar20 has also announced an exhibition called Gershon Iskowitz: Retrospective. The seller says it will trace his ideas from his intimate watercolours onward.
For now, the central questions about his life are the ones the AGO has raised: where he was in the decade after the war, and what those years shaped.
