Sold for: $17,500

PROVENANCE
Private Collection Toronto

2024 marks not only the 70th anniversary of the first exhibition by Painters 11, of which Town was a founding member, it also marks the centennial of Town’s birth, providing us the perfect vantage point from which to observe his place in Canadian Art history. Painter, printmaker, draftsman, author, and critic, Town’s centrality to Canadian art and culture in the 1950s and 1960s is difficult to overstate. Prolific and intensely collected both publicly and privately, his works are often boldly iconoclastic, intellectually confrontational, and technically virtuosic. Apart from his numerous Canadian exhibitions and retrospectives, his works were also included in international exhibitions held at the Guggenheim, the Smithsonian, Canada House Gallery in London, the Bienal de São Paulo, the Milan Triennale, and twice at the Venice Biennale. Fiercely loyal to a national and regional focus and practice, Town’s broad oeuvre forever impacted art in Canada.

This vibrant, gestural, fully abstract-expressionist work was produced at a key juncture for Town and for painting in Canada. 1953 was the year the collective known as Painters 11 exhibited their work at Simpson’s department store in a project titled “Abstracts at Home.” This was prologue to their first formal exhibition with Roberts Gallery the following year, a watershed moment Canadian Art history.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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