68/150: Victor Cicansky’s Unique Legacy

Victor Cicansky (1935-2025) created celebrated sculptures in clay and bronze as a testament to his love of the land, gardening and the natural world, always with his trademark humor.

His sought-after tables and benches, and his creative shovels and other garden objects, were hallmarks of the Saskatchewan sculptor and professor.

But it was his clay and glaze canning jars, and his pantry shelf arrangements, that endlessly captivated his collectors (details and more pantry work here).

The pantry idea gives me shelves of opportunity to play with dazzling coloured glazes. I want the colours to be zany and aggressively exuberant. Wild. Once I decide on the colour for the pantry, I paint it. -V. Cicansky

The acclaimed Saskatchewan artist was born in Regina in 1935 to Romanian parents and spent his early years learning to garden, a passion that became his life’s work. He enrolled in a pottery class, which led him to a ceramic residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and then to the University of California, where he received a master’s in fine arts. Upon returning to Canada, Cicansky taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the University of Regina.

It was a University of Regina lecture that led to Cicansky’s lifelong friendship with two other Regina artists: sculptor Joe Fafard (who died in 2019) and painter Wilf Perrault. “I think the three of us were definitely influencing each other,” Perreault said.

Cicansky elevated his humble subjects with talent and sense of humour, Perreault said. “It was the way he played with it and the glazes he put on those pieces of ceramic,” Perreault said. “It was all playful and serious at the same time.”

Cicansky achieved international acclaim during his life. He received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1997, was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2009 and was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2012.

 “With a legacy that could be described as both whimsical and attentive to prairie ecologies at risk, Cicansky’s work celebrated his Romanian-Canadian immigrant roots and his profound joy in anticipating new possibilities through the microcosm of his garden,” said the MacKenzie Art Gallery, which curated a retrospective of his work in 2019. Called The Gardener’s Universe, this video takes a look at some works.

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Victor Cicansky’s bronze and ceramic sculptures have been exhibited extensively across Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe and his work is found in numerous museum and corporate collections including: Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Fine Arts (Tokyo), National Gallery of Canada, RBC Financial Group, and Shaw Communications Inc.

Victor Cicansky’s website, here.

At Slate Gallery, which represents his estate, here.

Recollections captured online at the time of his death, here.

Image in the header at top of post: October Bench Apples, Bronze, patina, acrylic paint, 48″ x 24″ x 72″

Note: Images are from Victor Cicansky’s website, here, many of them photographed by Gary Robins, here.

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This is No. 68 in 150 Artists, an ongoing series on Canadian artists you should know.