Image: The Bookstore, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
‘Marion Wagschal: Cyclops and Other Tales’ is on view in Ottawa from September 11, 2026, to January 17, 2027. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Canada in partnership with Centre d’art CAB.
For more than six decades, Marion Wagschal has returned to one enduring subject: the human figure. In her paintings, the body is never simply a physical presence; it is a carrier of memory, a record of experience, and a site where personal and collective histories converge.
At once monumental and intimate, Wagschal’s work explores the complexity of the human condition, where desire and dread, tenderness and violence, vulnerability and resilience coexist.
Her figures are neither heroic nor flawless but vulnerable and exposed. Sometimes awkward and sometimes sensual, they are always deeply human. Wagschal embraces the body’s weight, frailty and contradictions, using it as a vessel to examine identity, mortality, inheritance and belonging.
