York Wilson is a key figure in the development of abstraction in Canada in the twentieth century. His work ranged from figurative art to Abstract Expressionism and geometric abstraction, using media such as painting, collage, prints and drawings. Born in Toronto in 1907, Wilson was encouraged from an early age to develop his talent for graphic art. After receiving two years of formal training as a commercial artist from the Central Technical School, he launched a successful career in advertising at Brigden’s Limited, one of Toronto’s largest art studios. He later moved to Sampson-Matthews Ltd., where he worked alongside a pool of significant creative talent that included Group of Seven members A.J. Casson and Franklin Carmichael. He eventually moved to Detroit, as the wages were more favourable in the United States. Wilson traveled with his former co-worker and friend Edwin Smith, who was his first mentor in modern art, and who exposed Wilson to a plethora of works by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists.

Affected by the Great Depression, Wilson returned to Toronto. He would ultimately return to a successful career in advertising until the 1940s, when his interest in painting came to the forefront. During this period, he started exhibiting his work as a painter in various solo and group events, notably in a two-man show with Jack Bush in 1944.

Following an early retirement from the advertising profession at the age of 41, Wilson moved with his wife and daughter to Mexico, which proved to be a major catalyst to his career as an artist. They lived a nomadic lifestyle, traveling extensively through Europe, Asia and North America, and his foreign experiences acted as a powerful visual stimulant. In Mexico he was inspired by light, in Venice he played with the colour red, and during a stay in Paris, he experimented with geometric form. He returned to Toronto in 1982. Although he never fully abandoned his figurative background, his work illustrated his experimentation with abstraction.

Well known in Canada for his work as a muralist, which expanded until the mid-1970s, Wilson was commissioned to complete a total of over 12 public murals throughout his career, including at the Redpath Library at McGill University, the Imperial Oil Building, the Bell Telephone Building and Carleton University. Despite his prominence as a muralist, he described himself as “first a painter, with a flair for murals.” His body of work as a painter was well received in Canada as well as overseas.

Wilson is the recipient of multiple awards for his work, including a prize from the Baxter Art Foundation in 1959, the Centennial Medal of Canada in 1967 and the Ontario Society of Artists Lifetime Achievement Award in 1983. He regarded the self-portrait commissioned by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for its permanent collection as the highest honour in his career as a painter.