Collection: Gyula Kalmar
Canadian abstract painter Gyula Kalmar was born in 1955 in Miskolc city, Hungary, where in his early twenties he studied in a private art program. In 1977, Kalmar and his family emigrated to Canada. As an outsider artist and as a part of the Hungarian diaspora, Kalmar was living, working and art making in Toronto. While doing so, he was deeply ingrained within the Toronto art scene, which at the time, the Toronto-based Canadian abstract group, Painters Eleven, was leading an exciting abstract expressionist movement that deeply influenced both Kalmar and the canon of art history.
Having visited many art galleries, developed relationships with art dealers and having personally collected Toronto based art, Kalmar was further inspired by both the Daniel Soloman show at the Moore Gallery, and his studio visit with Erin Loree. It was the cumulation of these experiences that awoke Kalmar’s artistic inspiration, and sparked his pursuit of artmaking as a full-time practice. Kalmar has participated in group and solo shows, and his works reside in many private and corporate collections, both domestically and internationally.