The collection of the Musée international d'art naïf de Magog comprises 1300 pieces by more than 334 artists from 42 countries. MIANM is the only museum in Canada entirely devoted to naive art.
Pieces from Quebec naive artists constitute some 35% of the collection. Most of these pieces are oil or acrylic paintings on canvass but we also find other medium and supports. Many of these paintings describe scenes from Quebec traditional past or from current daily life. Nature often takes a predominant place. We find in these paintings multifaceted artistic creativity where naive artists explore their universe with a critical or even an ironical eye. The Museum owns also some pieces from Canadian artists.
The largest part of the Museum collection comes from artists from abroad. In addition to Canada, 33 other countries are represented in our collection. Most naive art paintings from foreign artists in our collection are from Haïti, France and Romania. Mexico and Russia are also present in our global collection, with a religious or folk art coloration.
The Museum manages a significant collection of pieces from Huichol artists, Indians from the center of Mexico still living for the most part according to their ancestral traditions. Huichol artists produce tablas, or pictures created with colourful wool threads, and sculptures and other objects decorated with multicolor beads, called kukas. The support for the tablas is a wood board covered with sticky bee wax. With a knife or his own nail, the artist draws a sketch of the scene on the softened heated wax. With the thumb, the artist then places the wool threads to create the picture. The Museum owns 76 tablas and six kukas. The Museum also owns a collection of some 50 Mexican paintings on traditionally hand-made amate paper as well as a dozen ex-votos (oil on metal).
From the ex-USSR, and particularly from Russia, the Museum owns a collection of 63 icons representative of the richness of traditional religious art. In addition, the collection includes 23 nests of dolls and 17 painted and lacquered boxes which are good examples of the Russian folk art.
Our Archives may contain works lended by Private Collections for Exhibitions.