Bobak, Bruno, 1923-2012 : Bruno Bobak was born in Poland in 1923 but came to Canada in 1925 with his parents, who settled initially in Saskatchewan and then in Hamilton, Ontario. He studied art at the age of thirteen under Arthur Lismer at the Art Gallery of Toronto and then under Carl Schaefer and Charles Goldhamer at the Central Technical School, Toronto. He enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1943 and was appointed an official war artist in 1944, serving in Europe with the Fourth Canadian Armoured Division. He married fellow war artist Molly Lamb in 1945.
After the war, Bruno Bobak worked as a designer for the Canadian Government Exhibition Commission in Ottawa and then moved to British Columbia where he became head of the Design Department at the Vancouver School of Art. In 1957, he was awarded a Canadian Government Overseas Senior Fellowship and went to Europe to study and paint. In 1960, Bruno Bobak was offered a post as artist-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, and Fredericton became the Bobaks' home. Soon after, in 1962, he became Director of the University of New Brunswick's Art Centre.
Bruno Bobak has been a member of the British Columbia Society of Artists, Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, Canadian Group of Painters, Society of Canadian Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Canadian Society of Graphic Art and the Royal Canadian Academy. He has participated in more than two hundred and fifty group exhibitions and has had more than eighty one-man shows. He is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée des Beaux-Arts, and elsewhere. He has received honorary degrees and other awards in recognition of his contributions to Canadian art.
Bobak, Molly Lamb, 1922-2014 : The artist Molly Lamb Bobak was born in Vancouver in 1922, the daughter of Canadian geologist and Secretary of the Canadian Mining Association, Harold Mortimer-Lamb, who was a well-known amateur photographer and art critic, and a friend of many Canadian artists including A.Y. Jackson. Her mother had immigrated to Canada from England and ran a resort on Galiano Island in British Columbia.
Molly Lamb studied at the Vancouver School of Art between 1938 and 1941 under the painter Jack Shadbolt. After joining the CWAC's, she worked on set and costume designs for the Army Show in Toronto. She won third prize at the Canadian Army Art Exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1944 and was appointed an official war artist with the Canadian Army 1945-1946. As a war artist she was sent to Holland to paint the aftermath of war. She married fellow Canadian war artist Bruno Bobak in 1945.
After the war, Molly Bobak taught in the Design Department at the Vancouver School of Art and was an instructor at the University of British Columbia 1958-1959. In 1960, Molly Bobak was asked by Air France to lead a tour in Paris; she had also received a Canada Council grant and spent part of the year living and painting in Europe. That same year, she moved to Fredericton to begin teaching at the University of New Brunswick's Art Centre, where she remained until 1967.
Molly Bobak has been a member of the B.C. Society of Artists, Canadian Group of Painters and Canadian Society of Graphic Art, and has exhibited her work across the country. She is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée des Beaux-Arts, and elsewhere. She has received honorary degrees and other awards in recognition of her contributions to Canadian art.
