Collection: Harold Town

Harold Town (1924-1990) was a Canadian artist celebrated for his wide-ranging talent and bold, brash personality. He was known for praising his own genius, sparring with his critics, and living an unconventional, bohemian lifestyle. Town was a central figure in the Painters Eleven, the Toronto collective that helped introduce abstract art to Canada in the 1950s. His work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1956 and 1964, and during the 1960s his prints were acquired by the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Town was well-known for his printmaking, as well as for his paintings and works other media. In the 1950s he invented a singular approach to monoprinting, creating what he coined as “Single Autographic Prints” using a lithography press in his studio. Town created two prints at Open Studio in 1977, and in 2015 a posthumous project to print seven linocut blocks previously carved by Town was initiated by the Harold Town estate and printed at Open Studio.