Sam Borenstein

Canadian artist (1908 1969)

Sam Borenstein (15 January 1908 – 15 December 1969) was a Canadian painter. During his forty year career he painted numerous scenes of Montreal and Laurentian villages and Quebec landscapes bustling with human activity, using brilliant colours and exuberant brushwork. Borenstein was best known for his expressionistic cityscapes and rural scenes, but also produced numerous portraits and still lifes.

Born in Kalvarija, Lithuania, Russian Empire in 1908, Borenstein immigrated to Canada in 1921, and moved to Montreal with his father and one of his sisters. He spent two years in Ottawa, then returned to Montreal, where he worked in the garment industry. Although he had little formal training, Borenstein took evening art classes, studying sculpture with Elzéar Soucy and drawing with Adam Sheriff Scott and John Young Johnstone, and associating with local artists Alexandre Bercovitch, Fritz Brandtner, Herman Heimlich, and Louis Muhlstock. His first solo exhibition took place in 1934 at the Coffee House café in Montreal. Within months of his return to Canada, he had a show at the Sidney Carter Art Gallery in Montreal and was invited to join the Contemporary Arts Society. This film also won nine international film festival awards including a Genie for Best Short Documentary. In 2005, there was a Borenstein retrospective titled Sam Borenstein: The Colours of Montreal curated by Jacques Des Rochers and Loren Lerner for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which toured across Canada In 2011, an abridged version of the Montreal retrospective in 2005 opened at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York. It was the first solo show devoted to Borenstein outside of Canada.