Charles Marega (1871-1939)

Charles Marega was an Italian-Canadian sculptor who produced a number of outstanding monuments in the province of British Columbia. Some of the most significant works of architecture and engineering in the 1910s to 1930s in Canada feature his works of sculpture. He was a leader in the art scene on the West Coast, helping to establish the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts and the Vancouver Art Gallery. This master artist established a presence for the art of sculpture within the developing West Coast artistic community, helping to place Vancouver and British Columbia on a more equal footing to artistic centres in other provinces in Canada.

Born in 1871 into a middle-class Italian family in Gorizia, then within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Carlo Marega studied the art of sculpture and the trade of artistic plaster design in Italy and Vienna. Later, he worked in Zurich then moved to South Africa in 1906, before settling in Vancouver in 1909. In 1926, Marega became a Canadian citizen and officially changed his first name from Carlo to Charles.

As a highly successful exponent of the Beaux-Arts style and later the Art Deco, Marega first introduced and then made a significant contribution to the advancement of sculpture in the European tradition in British Columbia. His contributions to sculpture were diverse. During his career in Vancouver, Marega executed public monuments as well as architectural sculpture for major buildings and bridges that are recognized today as Canadian landmarks. These include the David Oppenheimer memorial (1910), a fountain to King Edward VII (1912), a memorial to American president Warren Harding (1926), a fountain to Vancouver personality Joe Fortes (1927), sculptures for the Burrard Bridge (1932), a statue of Captain George Vancouver at Vancouver City Hall (1936), and the lions for the Lions Gate Bridge (1939). He also executed decorative plasterwork for a number of theatres, fine residences and commercial buildings, as well as a number of small studio pieces.

Marega, along with other artists in the community, made important contributions towards the establishment of an art school and an art gallery, both of which continue to exist today as important institutions in Canada. In addition, he furthered the art of sculpture as a teacher by training students who later exhibited alongside him in the 1930s and became successful artists in their own right. Through his work, he successfully established and sustained the presence of sculpture in European styles in one of Canada’s major cities, a presence which had already existed for a considerable length of time in central and eastern Canada.