Image: The Bookstore, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The National Gallery of Canada will open 'Marion Wagschal: Cyclops and Other Tales' on September 10 in Ottawa, presenting a survey of the Montreal-based artist’s figurative practice across five decades. The exhibition runs in Gallery C218 through January 17, 2027, and is organized by the National Gallery of Canada in partnership with Centre d’art CAB.
According to the Gallery, the exhibition highlights the enduring relevance of Wagschal’s work and its emphasis on emotional depth, sensitivity and personal expression. The online exhibition text describes Wagschal’s paintings as drawing on art history, family narratives and intimate relationships, while moving fluidly between the personal and the collective. The Gallery says her pictures reveal fear, desire, vulnerability and resilience as fundamental aspects of the human condition.
Wagschal was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1943 to Holocaust survivors and moved to Canada at age nine. The Gallery says her life and work have been shaped by transnational identity and by the experience of observing the world from the margins. That perspective is presented as central to the exhibition’s framing of her paintings, which the institution says bear witness to shifting social environments, complex interpersonal dynamics and the unsettled rhythms of inner life.
The show brings together works from different periods of Wagschal’s career, including 'Cyclops' (1972), 'Cyclorama' (1988), 'Burning Spoons' (1993), 'Self-Portrait as Martha Raye' (2009), 'The Melancholy of Carnivores' (2014), and 'Tales from the Schwarzwald as Told by My Mother' (1980–2013). Images and listings on the Gallery’s site indicate that the exhibition will include paintings and works on paper from private collections and institutional holdings, underscoring the range of materials and sources assembled for the presentation.
The National Gallery of Canada is also programming an opening-night event tied to the exhibition. 'Meet the Artist: Marion Wagschal' is scheduled for September 10 from 6 to 7 p.m. in Gallery C218, where Wagschal will join NGC Assistant Curator of Special Projects Anaïs Castro for a tour of the exhibition space. The event listing says the conversation will be in English with a bilingual question period and will be free as a drop-in activity.
The Gallery’s August newsletter previewed the exhibition as one of its upcoming fall highlights, saying it “celebrates five decades of Wagschal’s art” and “blurs the lines between biography and fiction,” while presenting figurative painting as a means of personal expression and self-determination. The exhibition remains on view at the National Gallery of Canada, 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, until January 17, 2027.
