Barry Allikas

Barry Allikas is a Montreal-based painter who is one of the strongest exponents of post-painterly abstraction in Canada. His hard-edge line is widely known for its immaculate perfectionism, as well as its wide-ranging flexibility, and his use of it across a broad array of compositional ideas. Allikas incorporates unusual information, influences and ideas into his practice, extending the Plasticien language and style in a unique and fresh manner. As a colourist, Allikas is bold and decisive, but also capable of quiet lyricism, and subtler, more tonal passages, often juxtaposed with areas of saturated chroma, creating powerful and beautiful effects.

For decades, Allikas has been producing some of the best abstract paintings in Canada, a fact attested to by his inclusion in Roald Nasgaard’s landmark study “Abstract Painting in Canada”, and by his being listed by the Montreal Gazette as one of the top five abstract painters in Montreal. His work can be found in numerous private, corporate, and museum collections, among them the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art de Joliette, Hydro-Québec, the Caisse de dépôt et de placement du Québec, and the Banque nationale du Canada.