HAROLD TOWN: PAINTINGS & COLLAGES FROM THE 1950s-60s AND THE ENIGMA DRAWINGS
Opening Reception Saturday, February 1st from 2pm – 6pm
Exhibition runs until: February 26th, 2014
Christopher Cutts Gallery, 21 Morrow Avenue, Toronto, ON, (416)532-5566
Christopher Cutts Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of paintings and collages from the 1950s to the early 1960s and a selection of Enigma drawings from the estate of Harold Town.
It was sixty years ago this February that Painters Eleven held its first exhibition at the Roberts Gallery here in Toronto. Robert Fulford stated in a text in 1997 that, “Painters Eleven helped to install him [Town] in the public consciousness”. So it is fitting that sixty years later we collectively are still very much aware of the artistic legacy of Harold Town. The paintings and collages on display in this exhibition focus on these, particular fruitful days of Town’s artistic practice, which Fulford referred to as being “arguably the richest and most productive time of his life”.
Also on exhibit are the remarkable pen, ink, and gouache Enigma drawings. The Enigma series began in 1964 with the publishing of McCelland and Stewart Limited’s HAROLD TOWN ENIGMAS, 1964, and continued until the early 1970s. These incredible drawings, according to Elizabeth Kilbourn in a 1964 review, state that, “In this series, Town attempts to express his strongly-held convictions about modern society”. Though these works were created forty to fifty years ago, the “strongly-held convictions about modern society” seem as relevant today as then.
