“Brought to mind…is the work of Chaim Soutine, the great painter of a religiously charged world unfettered by the laws of physics, Borenstein repeatedly beams us back to the present with his superb visual pyrotechnics.”
Henry Lehmann, Montreal Gazette, July 30 2005.
“The flowers are moving as if they are still growing in the garden. A play of sinuous stems and flaring yellow blossoms reminiscent of flickering flames, the painting is composed through brushstrokes moving in a dance of paint,”
Professor Loren Lerner, commenting on the still-life EARLY SUNFLOWERS, from the catalogue SAM BORENSTEIN, MMFA Publisher ©2004.
“You could hang a Borenstein next to a Vlaminck, a Dufy or a Van Gogh even, but not next to the art that Canadians often collected in the fifties and sixties.”
Walter Klinkhoff, Walter Klinkhoff Art Gallery, interview for the film COLOURS OF MY FATHER ©1991 NFB.
“At the time, in the mid-fifties, the great Van Wisselingh Firm of Amsterdam, held yearly exhibits at Watson’s, showing Van Goghs, Renoirs, and other great painters. One of the partners, a Mr. de Jong, once challenged me. “Do you know who Canada’s best painter is?” When I hesitated, he said “Sam Borenstein, no doubt about it.”
REMINISCENCES OF AN ART DEALER by Walter Klinkhoff ©1993 Walter Klinkhoff Art Gallery.
“There is a kind of generosity with the paint, where the artist applies colour, thick colour, slashing it on, moving it around….”
Leo Rosshandler, SAM BORENSTEIN, McClelland and Stewart Publisher ©1978.
“An inner tension, a below the surface pressure, seems to be active in the landscape, as if an earthquake were in the making.”
Leo Rosshandler, SAM BORENSTEIN, McClelland and Stewart Publishers ©1978.
“…the oils have been smeared, stropped, splayed and scooped by the palette knife, twisted just so, and left to dry into a rough swirl that conveys the most subtly observed form.”
William Kuhns, SAM BORENSTEIN, McClelland and Stewart Publisher ©1978.
“If you were to hang another painting like this one in the exhibition, it would knock all the others off the walls. Our show would not be complete without the presence of Borenstein’s work.”
Curator, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1977.
“Borenstein’s work pulsates with a fervor that deserves attention”.
Tully Kikeuka, Spectator, September 19, 1974.
“The Canadian art scene, with its compulsive effort to stay neat and dignified, desperately needs untrammelled, unorthodox painters…”
Henry Lehmann, Montreal Star, January 21, 1978.