The series consists of special documents filed in binders and scrapbooks by Aba Bayefsky's wife, Evelyn, in rough chronological groupings intended as research material for a proposed biography.
The first binder is labelled Chapter I and includes documentation on Aba Bayefsky's war service, with memorabilia including a coat of arms painted by Bayefsky on animal hide, bearing his name and those of Al Cloutier, Carl Schaefer, Miller Brittain and Charles Goldhamer, and a postcard reproducing Picasso's litho of a dove commemorating the Second World Congress of the Defenders of Peace. It also includes documentation on Bayefsky's exhibitions with the Picture Loan Society and in Dallas, India and Japan. The correspondence includes letters from Cleeve Horne regarding the Imperial Oil Collection, from Donald Buchanan and Kathleen Fenwick at Canadian Art, and a script of a Kate Aitken broadcast about Bayefsky.
Binders labelled Aba selection and Aba Bayefsky selected writings include letters from A.Y. Jackson, Barker Fairley, Carl Dair, Graham McInnes, Helen Frye, Henri Masson, George Pepper (from Resolute Bay, on board the C.M.S. 'C.D. Howe'), Humphrey Milnes and Charles Comfort, as well as from the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve) and English artist John Berger. There is correspondence with Rabbi Gunther Plaut about Jewish artists and abstraction, with the Scottish Philatelic Secretariat about its stamp using his portrait of Christopher Grieve, and a letter from Bayefsky to his parents dated 1943, telling them about the Art Gallery of Toronto's purchase of a painting for
One binder contains notices of Bayefsky's exhibitions and there is also a scrapbook containing reviews and other printed material documenting these exhibitions.
It should be noted that very similar material is found in the Chrono files series and there is considerable overlap between the two series. Note, too, that there are scrapbooks in the Ontario College of Art series.
Series contains photographs of Bayefsky as a child and as a student at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario), photographs from the Second World War, and of Bayefsky working on various projects including portrait of poet Hugh MacDiarmid, sketching in Kensington Market in Toronto and on trips to India and Japan. Also included are photographs of exhibition openings.
