The snow has chased me out of Saskatchewan (actually, I was leaving anyway) but a trip to my hometown of Saskatoon would not be complete without mentioning the mural controversy.
In the 50’s, my father, artist William Perehudoff, painted some frescoes in the executive suite of the old Intercontinental Packers building. (As an aside, my mother, artist Dorothy Knowles, who was extremely pregnant with my oldest sister, Rebecca, at the time, was there handing him the paints.) The building is going to be torn down for a freeway and the murals were going to be demolished.
The murals are one of the last remaining examples of purist art in Canada (my dad studied with Amedee Ozenfant in New York, co-founder, along with Le Corbusier, of the Purist School), so it was goodbye to a small piece of history – until a group of devoted save-the-muralists campaigned to stop the destruction and the crazy thing is … it seems to have worked.
The murals will be saved!
Hooray for the little people.
So, from the Perehudoff family to the campaigners … thanks.
(To read more about the murals, the Mendel Art Gallery has a blog about it.)
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