“My paintings carry no other message but the surprise, spontaneity and optimism of colour.” – William Perehudoff
Perehudoff (b. Langham, Saskatchewan, 1918) was a Canadian abstract painter whose career spanned the twentieth century. Although Perehudoff lived and worked in Saskatchewan, he was heavily influenced by the colourful abstract works of painters like Kenneth Noland and Amédée Ozenfant. In the early 1960s Perehudoff attended several of the Emma Lake workshops held by Noland and Clement Greenberg. Greenberg was an enormously influential art critic who advocated for “formalist” painting: abstract works that explored colours, forms, textures, and compositional space rather than representation. Noland was a prominent American Colour Field painter. In the 1960s, Perehudoff’s bold colours, abstract shapes, and neutral grounds showed the influence of these workshops. Along with Jack Bush, he was a pioneer of Canadian abstract painting. Although his saturated blocks and thick sweeps of colour do not represent any real-world subject, the flat compositions and warm tones sometimes evoke his prairie setting.