Bayefsky, Aba, 1923-2001 : Aba Bayefsky was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1923 and studied art at Central Technical School, under Charles Goldhamer, Carl Schaefer and Peter Haworth, and at the Art Gallery of Toronto's Children's Art Centre started by Arthur Lismer, joining the latter as a junior instructor in 1941. He was a member of the Studio Group, a co-operative group of painters sharing studio space on Hayden Street in Toronto, which included the painter and scholar Barker Fairley. He exhibited in the Art Gallery of Toronto's 'Painters Under Twenty' exhibition in 1943, with Bruno Bobak and Roloff Beny, and the Gallery purchased a work which was chosen for Yale University's survey exhibition, 'Canadian Art', in 1944.
Bayefsky joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as an aircraftman in 1943. After winning first prize in the RCAF Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings in 1944, he was appointed an official Canadian war artist, as a Flight Lieutenant attached to the RCAF. In 1945, at the age of 22, he was assigned to record the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, an experience that profoundly affected him. He received his discharge from the armed forces in 1946. He married in 1947 and returned to Europe on a French government scholarship to study art, 1947-1948, attending the Academie Julien in Paris. In 1948 he executed a series of paintings documenting displaced persons camps in Germany, which were exhibited at Hart House in Toronto.
On his return to Canada, Bayefsky helped found the Assembly for Canadian Arts, a short-lived organization dedicated to the promotion of Canadian artists and their protection from discrimination. He began a career as a teacher at the Ontario College of Art in 1956. His activism resulted in his temporary dismissal in 1968, but public support led to his reinstatement and he continued his association with the college until his retirement in 1983. An opponent of abstraction, Bayefsky always argued for the importance of social meaning in art. His own work reflected his opposition to war and his interest in understanding and depicting other cultures, based on his travels to India (on a Canada Council grant in 1958), Japan and elsewhere. Throughout his career he produced many portraits, his subjects ranging from academics at the University of Toronto to fellow artists to anonymous vendors in Toronto's Kensington market. He was fascinated by tattooed bodies and did a series of paintings featuring them. He also did a series of work on the folk figure Paul Bunyan in the 1950's and illustrated 'Tales from the Talmud', 1963, 'The Ballad of Thrym', 1965, and Indian legends, 1969. He completed several commissioned murals, including works for the Canadian Pavilion at the Brussels' World Fair, and exhibited internationally.
Bayefsky was a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and received their First Purchase Award in 1952. He received the J.W.L. Forster Award from the Ontario Society of Artists in 1958. He was also a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art, the Canadian Group of Painters, and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1979. Aba Bayefsky died on 5 May 2001.
