Artist Info
Marion Nicoll
Marion Nicoll was celebrated for her incredible influence on Alberta art and was one of the province’s first abstract artists. She worked in watercolour, oil, printmaking, and automatic drawing. Born in Calgary, she studied at the Ontario College of Art, the provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Alberta, Emma Lake Artist Workshop in 1957, and the Art Students League in New York City. Nicoll later taught at the Alberta College of Art from 1931 to 1965, which named a gallery in her honour as she was the institute’s first full-time female instructor.
Nicoll was a member of the Alberta Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of Drawing and Printmaking, and became the first female artist from the prairies to be part of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. In the 1940s she was a member of the Calgary Group alongside Maxwell Bates, Jock MacDonald, Janet Mitchell, Luke and Vivian Lindoe, and others. Her work is seen in collections across Canada and the United States.
The Edmonton Art Gallery held a retrospective of her work in 1971. The 2013 exhibition “Marion Nicoll, Silence and Alchemy” at the University of Calgary included a work housed in the University of Lethbridge Art Collection. The 2016 University of Lethbridge Art Gallery show “Works in Progress” also included a Marion Nicoll piece.
