Nationally-renowned Canadian artist Bruce Head RCA began drawing and sketching as an elementary school student in central Winnipeg and never looked back. Born in St. Boniface in 1931, he graduated from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art in 1953. Since then, he has pursued an active career as a designer, painter and sculptor. He was amongst the handful of young Manitoba artists whose work in the 1950s stimulated a dramatic surge in interest in contemporary art on the Canadian Prairies, and who rapidly came to represent a unique visual movement in their own rights.

Elected to the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA) in the early 70s, Head, at the time, was the youngest Manitoban to be elected. He had been the recipient of numerous awards and had undertaken several public commissions. He took early retirement from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a graphic designer in the late 80s, building a large studio onto his home in south Winnipeg (where he has worked constantly since), exhibiting frequently in galleries primarily in Western Canada, and accepting occasional commissions.

Head’s insistence on the integrity of the creative process has permeated his professional life. As a graphic designer for the CBC for many years, his work carried a uniquely recognizable energy and bold strength that reflects consistently in his canvas pieces and sculpture. Impatient with verbose, pseudo-intellectual forms of artistic interpretation, he defines his artistic philosophy as “what you see is what you get”.

Head’s credits include solo exhibitions and participations in group shows across Canada. His work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the London Regional Gallery, the Confederation Centre, the Alberta College of Art, the Mendel Art Gallery and the Saidye Bronfman Centre, to name but a few.

Reproductions of Head’s work have been published in international publications including Graphis in Switzerland, Ideas in Japan, the Art Directors Club in New York, Montreal and Toronto, Arts Canada, Who’s Who in American Art, and the International Who’s Who in Art and Antiques.

Today, Head is active with a number of Western Canadian private galleries and arts consultants. His work is represented in hundreds of Canadian collections, both private and public, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Great West Life Assurance Company, the University of Calgary, the Law Society of Manitoba, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, etc. Many major pieces hang in public spaces in his home province, from corporate head offices and country clubs to the government of Manitoba lobbies, such as the shaped canvas piece at the Woodsworth building in Winnipeg. The most notable one is in the underground concourse below Canada’s windiest corner at Portage and Main in Winnipeg – a circular sculpted concrete wall of more than four hundred feet in circumference. The piece was the largest concrete form created by an artist in Canada.

In 1997 Head participated in the RCA Prairie Regional Exhibition, organized by the RCA in cooperation with the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG). Extremely successful, the exhibition attracted over 13,000 visitors – the largest audience the WAG ever had for an exhibition. It then travelled to venues in Western and Upper Canada in 1998 and 1999. In 2005 an exhitbition titled A Survey: Selections for a Retrospective, held at the Ken Segal Gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba, displayed a selection from his 6 decades of work. In 2006 the WAG has one of Head’s shaped canvases on display in the lobby, along with works by Tony Tascona, Winston Leathers and Kenneth Lochhead, highlighting the artists that were at the forefront of modernism on the prairies.