Collection: York Wilson

Ronald York Wilson (1907-1984) was a Toronto-based artist best known for his large-scale commissioned murals created during the 1950s for institutions including McGill University Library, Montreal; the Imperial Oil Building, Toronto; and the O’Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts (now Meridian Hall), Toronto. The trajectory of Wilson’s work was greatly influenced by his travels to Mexico in the 1950s, where he moved away from his previously-commercial painting style, to murals and abstract compositions.

In the late 1970s, Wilson created lithograph prints at Open Studio which combine textural elements with geometric shapes and tonal explorations of colour. He worked with the then-head of Lithography Don Holman, and Otis Tamasauskas in the studio. In this video clip, Tamasauskas recalls Wilson’s excitement of experimenting with the lithography process. Wilson’s lithograph ‘Donotis’ is named in tribute to the two printers who worked with him at Open Studio.