Chorale 4

About Chorale 4

This colorful modernist painting was inspired by music and created by Burton Kramer.

For decades, this Canadian artist has enjoyed a golden international reputation as a masterful graphic designer. His paintings also display an intuitive sense of color and a love of geometric form. Kramer uses both as a means of visualizing the powerful language of music. In this dynamic optical composition, vertical bars of sky blue march out from a rectangle packed with bars of yellow and hot orange. In music, the term ‘chorale’ refers to a hymn often sung by a choir.

“Instrumentally produced, multi-layered sound offers the listener sensory pleasure.
In my paintings, color and forms, integrated in a structure-based composition, provide a similar pleasure.” Burton Kramer

Burton Kramer was born in New York City in 1932. He is renowned for designing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation logo in 1974. Kramer trained at Yale University (MFA), The Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology (BSc), The Royal College of Art, London (Fulbright Scholar) and The State University of New York. Kramer has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Arts Ontario, The Order of Ontario by the Province, an Honorary Doctorate from Ontario College of Art & Design and named Member of the Order of Canada. His work has been exhibited in galleries internationally and is held in many private and public collections including The Royal Ontario Museum.