The first glass art gallery in Canada, Galerie Elena Lee has specialized in the exhibition and thepromotion of contemporary Canadian sculptural glass for over 40 years. The Gallery’s numerous activities, combined with the exceptional talent of its artists, helped to establish a solid reputation of excellence which now spreads beyond the city of Montreal and the borders of Canada. During these years, the vision and the determination of its founder and owner, Elena Lee, stimulated the development of the glass art community. Reciprocally, the growing quality of the production of Canadian glass artists contributed to the success of the Gallery. Simultaneously, at the time of the Gallery’s opening in 1976, the Studio Glass Movement in Quebec and Canada was also at its beginning. The history of the Galerie Elena Lee is thus bound to the particular development of this movement in the country but also, more broadly, on the international stage.

Born in 1942 in Milan, Italy, of an Italian father and a German mother, Elena Lee was brought up in Germany. During her studies to obtain a master’s degree in theatre and cinema at the University of Munich, she met Stuart Lee, a Quebecois geology student. When the couple decided to establish their roots in Montreal with their young son Marco, Elena decided to move
on from her teaching profession which she had practiced for the past five years. It is then that she began her pursuit into new avenues in which to invest her passion for the arts.

 

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