Brownstein: Morton Rosengarten was a man of few words but many sculptures and friends

Morton Rosengarten, a storied figure from Montreal’s cultural past, is being mourned by friends and family.

Rosengarten, who died two weeks ago at 92 after a lengthy battle with pulmonary disease, was a force — albeit a most unassuming and modest one — on the city’s burgeoning cultural scene in the latter half of the last century. A renowned sculptor, he deeply affected the lives of fellow iconoclasts and buddies like his lifelong best friend Leonard Cohen, Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, poet Irving Layton and painter/sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. He also left his mark on the scores of students he taught, among them Joni Mitchell.

“My uncle was just so principled and erudite, but with such a wry sense of humour. He was totally devoted to his art, and he taught me innumerable life lessons,” says his nephew Shawn Rosengarten, a Montreal TV distributor.

“We all lose people we love along the way, but this loss really hurts. My uncle Morton so inspired me both by his work and his life. He was my closest living relative, and I already miss him greatly.”

Sculptor Morton Rosengarten on Nov. 1, 2023 on his 90th birthday at an exhibition of his work in the Eastern Townships. Behind him is a poster featuring a sketch of Leonard Cohen that Rosengarten had doodled on a bar napkin decades earlier. (Shawn Rosengarten)

Born in Montreal in 1933, Morton graduated from Sir George Williams University in 1956 and went on to study at London’s famed St. Martin’s School of Art under the tutelage of three of the most influential British sculptors of the 20th century: Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi and Elisabeth Frink.

Following his studies in England, he returned to Montreal and launched with Cohen the long-defunct downtown bohemian outpost the Four Penny Gallery on Stanley St., dedicated to contemporary art and poetry.

Rosengarten continued to craft his sculptures in bronze, stone, wood and paper. He proved particularly resourceful in accessing industrial foundries, where he cast his own work in bronze and produced numerous series of innovative figurative sculptures and highly personalized portraits.

Obomsawin met Rosengarten 70 years ago when she arrived in Montreal, and they remained friends.

“Morton along with Leonard were among the first people I met here, and he turned out to be such a wonderful, lifelong friend,” says Obomsawin, 93, who is working on a documentary about the rights of Indigenous children. “We had an annual tradition of doing Christmas Eve dinners together at my place and even though his health was deteriorating, Morton showed up again for our last dinner in December. I used to get about 40 people to show up in the early years, but sadly, this year we were only 12.

“I will so miss him. He was such an incredible talent, but so low-key. I was very impressed by his artwork – all his bronzes and particularly the one did on my friend and his longtime companion Kittie Bruneau.”

In 1962, Rosengarten left Montreal for Bonaventure Island in the Gaspé, where he built a home with artist Bruneau. He later relocated to Way’s Mills in the Eastern Townships without Bruneau, who was to pass away in 2021.

In Way’s Mills, Rosengarten transformed a century-old creamery into an artist foundry and studio, where he worked for six decades.

He exhibited his work in Canada and abroad, including at New York’s prestigious Charles Egan Gallery and at Art Basel. He collaborated with Cohen as well as Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje on The Lines of the Poet, a 1981 “livre d’artiste” that has been displayed at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

“Morton Rosengarten’s early work was at the centre of an artistic avant-garde that shaped mid-20th-century art — a transformative period between figuration and abstraction,” notes Paul Maréchal, professor of art history at UQAM, Power Corporation of Canada curator and author.

In addition to teaching generations of university and CEGEP students as well as artists at the Saidye Bronfman Centre, Rosengarten is credited for giving Joni Mitchell a transformative lesson in drawing at New York’s Washington Square. Dissatisfied with her work, he suggested she draw him without looking at the paper. 

In Katherine Monk’s book Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell, the singer/songwriter/artist says he “gave me a very simple exercise which freed my drawing and gave it boldness and energy. He gave me my originality.”

Morton Rosengarten in 2017 outside the home he shared for years with Leonard Cohen on St-Dominique St. “We loved it. We just wanted somewhere to stay put and concentrate on our other endeavours back then.” Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

Though based in Way’s Mills until his death, Rosengarten always maintained his strong connection to Cohen, who had been spending much of his time on the fabled Greek isle of Hydra back in the 1960s and ’70s.

In 1971, Rosengarten and Cohen jointly purchased a small clapboard cottage and adjoining duplex on St-Dominique St. in the Plateau. Their motivation went beyond just finding a spot to sleep when in town.

“There was a period in the ’60s and early ’70s where everywhere we rented, we had to leave because landlords had other ideas about developing those places,” Rosengarten recalled in an interview we did at their shared residence in 2017. “In those days, this wasn’t exactly considered a desirable area. We couldn’t even get insurance for it. But we loved it. We just wanted somewhere to stay put and concentrate on our other endeavours back then.”

Perhaps there’s no greater testament to Cohen’s appreciation and devotion to his sculptor buddy than his poem Homage to Rosengarten, penned in 2014, two years before Cohen died:

If you have a wall, a bare wall in your house
All the walls in my house are bare
And I love the bare walls
The only thing I would put up
On one of my beloved bare walls
Not beloved
It doesn’t need beloved
It doesn’t need an adjective
The wall is fine as it is
But I would put up a Rosengarten …

Unlike Cohen, Rosengarten was a man of few words. He chose to remain in the background, allowing his bronzes and drawings to speak for him, and to leave the limelight to others.

It was these qualities that no doubt endeared Rosengarten to Cohen over the decades. In the 1965 NFB documentary Ladies and Gentlemen … Mr. Leonard Cohen, the poet/troubadour refers to Rosengarten as “one of the great gentlemen.”

Few would ever dispute that.

[email protected]

The post Brownstein: Morton Rosengarten was a man of few words but many sculptures and friends appeared first on Montreal Gazette.