Carle Hessay

Hans Karl Hesse, known in later life as Carle Hessay (30 November 1911 – 1 January 1978), was a German-born Canadian painter. Although much remains uncertain of his early years, he immigrated to Canada in 1927, and later studied at art academies in Paris and Dresden. Hessay served as a Canadian soldier in World War II. After the establishment of peace, he moved to British Columbia, eventually settling in the town of Langley, where he took up art again in the 1950s. Some of his early paintings were done in the manner of Romantic realism. The influence of Expressionism soon became significant, with Hessay drawing on both the European and American movements, together with aspects of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven. He painted landscapes throughout his artistic life, as well as cityscapes, the Spanish Civil War, Biblical prophecy, and conceptions of the far future. A sizable fraction of his output consisted of abstract pieces. Over time, Hessay's depictions grew more symbolic, one commentator describing his late work as "brazenly metaphysical and apocalyptic". He often made his own pigments, and his style is distinguished by his use of colour, especially black. In 2014, a group of Canadian writers published poems based on his small abstracts. Hessay was the subject of a 2017 documentary film and art exhibition at the University of Victoria.