Dalla Husband

Gladys Dalla Husband (March 3, 1899 – August 15, 1943) was a Canadian artist.

Life

The daughter of Major Herbert Husband, she was born in Winnipeg and grew up on the family ranch in Vernon. The family moved to England in 1903 but returned to Canada in 1907, settling in Banff. She studied art with Jessie Topham Brown, a student of the Slade School of Fine Art. After she received an inheritance from her grandmother, she travelled to London and then Paris where she pursued further studies in art. She exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendants there in 1929. While in Paris, she studied engraving with Józef Hecht. Her work was also shown at galleries in Paris, London and in Canada.

Husband and her friend Alice Carr du Croft convinced Stanley William Hayter to teach them how to make prints. This was the start of Atelier 17. Around 1930, Husband and Hayter also began an affair which lasted until 1938. She worked with Hayter on two projects Solidarité, published in 1936, and Fraternité, published in 1939. Other artists participating in these projects included Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky, André Masson and Yves Tanguy. Funds raised by these projects supported the Spanish resistance and Spanish children.

Husband returned to Canada at the start of World War II. In May 1940, she left for Mexico where a group of Canadian artists were working. She died in Mexico City of blood poisoning at the age of 44 after undergoing ear surgery.

In 1989, the Winnipeg Art Gallery acquired a substantial collection of Husband's work.