Perehudoff was born in
St. Paul's Hospital in
Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, on April 21, 1918, and was raised on a farm in the
Doukhobor community of Bogdanovka, between the towns of
Langham and
Borden, Saskatchewan. His formal education ended at grade eleven, It was at a workshop in 1962 that he met New York art critic
Clement Greenberg, Perehudoff's work has been represented in numerous public and private collections, including the
National Gallery of Canada,
Remai Modern in Saskatoon, the Canada Council Art Bank, the
Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the
Art Gallery of Ontario, and the
Montreal Museum of Fine Art. and in 1999, he was inducted as a Member of the
Order of Canada. He was made a member of the
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Due to failing eyesight, Perehudoff gave up painting around 2003–2004. In November 2009, several of Perehudoff's murals were successfully removed from the executive suite in the former Intercontinental Packers plant. Perehudoff painted them in 1950, and the abstract silhouettes are considered the last remaining examples of
purist cubist art from that period. Appraised at
$250,000, the murals had been at risk as the plant was slated for demolition. Ian Hodkinson, a retired art conservator, was brought in and used a special method to remove the acrylic paint from the plaster intact. The murals remained in storage until the
Remai Modern was completed in 2017. They are now displayed in a special antechamber, built to the same dimensions as the boardroom in which they first existed. In 2010, a travelling
retrospective titled
The Optimism of Colour: William Perehudoff was curated by Karen Wilkin for Saskatoon’s
Mendel Art Gallery. Perehudoff died on February 26, 2013, at age 94. ==References==