From his experimental Colour Field paintings to his assembled steel sculptures, Otto Rogers prioritizes themes of diversity and unity in his works. Born in Saskatchewan in 1935, Rogers’s extensive travels and exploration allowed him to associate with leading figures in the art world such as Clement Greenberg, Jack Shadbolt and Wynona Mulcaster.
Rogers grew up in the prairies and studied at the Saskatoon Teachers’ college from 1952 to 1953, then attained a BSc in Art Education in 1958, and an MSc in Fine Art in 1959. While living and working in the prairies, Rogers attended the Emma Lake Artist’s Workshop led by Shadbolt, in which he explored a constructivist and abstract approach to art making. Rogers became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1973.
Rogers has an extensive history in cultivating cutting edge art in Canada, and he helped revitalise the Emma Lake Artist’s Workshop in 1971 and 1978. For 24 years, Rogers was Professor of Art at the University of Saskatchewan (1960 – 1984), and he was the head of the Art Department there for 12 years (1972 – 1984). In 1988, he moved to Israel for ten years, where he became a Counselor member of the International Teaching Centre at the Bahá’i World Center. In 1998 Rogers returned to Canada, settling in Milford, Ontario.
Rogers’s style explores the Cubist-Constructivist tradition embodied by artists such as Pablo Picasso. His early works included portraits, still lives, landscapes and cityscapes. His later work became increasingly abstract and reflected his environment of rural Canada and the integration of his Bahá’i faith.
Rogers has works across Canada both in private collections and museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and in galleries in Iceland and Barcelona. After taking a break from showing his work for more than a decade, Rogers had a solo show at the Mira Godard Gallery in Toronto in 2013.