Ben Woolfitt

Ben Woolfitt (b. 1946, Saskatchewan, Canada) is a modernist and postmodernist painter. He has lived in Toronto since 1965, when he enrolled at Founders College, York University. In 1972, he founded Woolfitt's School of Contemporary Painting, where he taught until 1979. He later established Woolfitt's Fine Art Supplies in 1978, building it into an international distributor of artists' materials before selling the business in 2014. In 2017, Woolfitt founded modern.toronto, a museum dedicated to the exhibition of nonobjective painting. His work has been influenced since the 1960s by Color Field painting particularly the work of Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Hans Hotmann, and Jules Olitski-and later by Antoni Tàpies. Woolfitt has presented 30 solo exhibitions and participated in 15 group exhibitions across Canada, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Most recently, he mounted a major solo exhibition of abstract drawings at the Art Gallery of Ontario. His paintings are held in numerous public, corporate, and private collections internationally, including the MacLaren Art Centre, Hart House at the University of Toronto, the Remai Modern, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery.