Hailstorm in Alberta
William Kurelek
Canadian, 1927–1977
1961
An oil painting on board that compresses a prairie hailstorm into a haunting vignette, with Kurelek aiming to make visible how sudden, elemental violence intrudes on everyday rural life.
A vast, pale sky dominated by two low black clouds overwhelms a thin green horizon, while the foreground looks like a pocked lunar plain with a collapsed figure curled in a hail-scoured pit—an eerie mix of detailed observation and dreamlike solitude.
Bridging narrative folk realism and symbolic psychology, this work helped expand mid-20th-century Canadian art toward intimate, sometimes brutal portrayals of landscape, memory, and rural experience.
Medium
Oil on board
Dimensions
27 1/4 x 19" (69.3 x 48.2 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the Women's Committee of the Art Gallery of Toronto
Accession
380.1961
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
