Born in Ottawa in 1947, west coast artist, Gregg Simpson, has been active in visual art since the mid-1960s. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Canada, the U.S., France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Malaysia, and South America and is included in over 100 private and public collections in Europe, Asia and North America.
Simpson’s work is a synthesis of lyric abstraction with surrealist elements, which is also influenced by living in the B.C. landscape. His contribution to Canadian art has been studied at the Sorbonne, the Université Rabelais de Tours and Université de Rouen, in France and the Accademia Tiberina in Rome. His work has been exhibited and published by two renowned art historians, both colleagues of Surrealism’s founder, André Breton, including José Pierre, in his landmark book, L’Univers Surréaliste, (Editions Somogy, 1983) and Sarane Alexandrian, who put Simpson’s work in his periodical, Supériore Inconnu in 1999..
In May, 2000,Simpson exhibited in Tuscany at the Fortezza di Montalcino, a 14th Century castle, documented in A New Arcadia, The Art of Gregg Simpson on BRAVO TV, now downloadable from www.greggsimpson.com. In August, 2000, he exhibited a retrospective of drawings and frottages from 1978-1999 in Seillans, France, the final home of the great surrealist, Max Ernst, whose work has always inspired Simpson.
