PROVENANCE
Waddington Galleries, Montréal
Une importante collection privée, 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.

Layer upon layer of exactingly taped off pigment creates a dazzling visual effect in this work. Although Town was famously averse to artistic theory, one could be tempted to classify this as his exploration of the Op Art movement’s focus on the optical effects of colour and form. The image pulsates and scintillates on the eye, and includes suggestions of Town’s iconic Toy Horse motif in the upper half of the composition.

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