Michael Snow was born in Toronto on December 10, 1929. He is an internationally renowned contemporary artist who brilliantly masters various art expressions, such as painting, sculpture, cinema, photography and music. In the 50’s, he specialized in design at the Ontario Art and Design University while simultaneously developing his painting and jazz piano talents. First influenced by Matisse’s European art and de Kooning’s abstract expressionism, his paintings and drawings gradually evolved towards blending the subject and the surface of the canvass, creating an object-painting closer to American Minimalism. During the 60’s, Michael Snow settled in New York with his wife, filmmaker Joyce Wieland, and returned to figurative art with his ‘’Walking Woman’’ series. He intentionally explored the visual representation of this major work in all possible ways: painted, sketched, cut, sculpted, photographed, filmed, etc. until the subject had been exhausted. ‘’ My paintings are done by a filmmaker, my sculpture by a musician, my films by a painter, my music by a filmmaker, my paintings by a sculptor, my sculpture by a filmmaker, my films by a musician, my music by a sculptor… who sometimes all work together.” (1967) He also made several public sculptures, the most famous being ‘’Flight Stop’’ (1979), located at the Eaton Centre in Toronto.

Michael Snow is the recipient of numerous international awards and recognitions such as the Guggenheim Scholarship (1972), Officer of the Order of Canada (1982) and Companion of the Order of Canada (2007), first Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2000), Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres in France (1995) and an honorary doctorate from Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2004). His artworks, innovative in their ways of depicting time and space, were subject to a great number of international solo exhibitions and retrospectives. Furthermore, they are part of several public and private collections all over the world, including those of the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Museum Modwerner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna), Centre Georges-Pompidou (Paris) as well as Musée des beaux-arts and Musée d’art contemporain in Montréal.