Harold Town

He also worked as an illustrator, a profession he credited with imparting a sense of discipline that would last throughout his entire artistic career. His early illustrative appeared in magazines such as Maclean's and Mayfair.

Harold Town studied at OCAD University. The recorded working language is English. Work by Harold Town is recorded in the collections of Tate, National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Museum of Modern Art and Detroit Institute of Arts. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Order of Canada and Member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

• Name — Harold Town • Birth Name — Harold Barling Town • Born — 13 June 1924 • Birthplace — Toronto, Ontario • Died — 27 December 1990 • Place of death — Peterborough, Ontario • Spouse — Trudie Carol Tredwell (sep. 1989) • Partner — Lynne St. David (1989-1990) • Field — Painter, printmaker, illustrator • Training — Western Technical School, Ontario College of Art • Movement — Painters Eleven

Harold Town was trained at Western Technical-Commercial School and the Ontario College of Art, both in Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum gave him what he called a global horizon which influenced his commercial and abstract art. His early work also reflected his interest in Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning. Gerta Moray in Harold Town: Life & Work described his collages as similar to his paintings, because in them he juxtaposed textures and fragments to startle the viewer. Town's work moved from a dark expressionist style to abstraction in vivid colours, exploring a range of styles and media, using artistic traditions from other cultures to reflect his own experience. In the 1960s, Town developed colourful monotype prints which he called Single Autographic Prints, a phrase he never explained. These won him awards in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia and Santiago, Chile, and the prints were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alfred Barr, then director of Museum of Modern Art, called Town one of the world's greatest printmakers. Roald Nasgaard describes these prints as being of great finesse and subtlety.

In the late 1940s, Town joined Painters Eleven, but their early exhibitions were met with disdain. The Riverside Museum in New York hosted the Twentieth Annual Exhibition of American Abstract Artists with 'Painters Eleven' of Canada in 1956. A year later, American art critic Clement Greenberg paid a visit to Toronto, although Town would not see him. In the Canadian press, the group's most ardent supporters were Robert Fulford and Pearl McCarthy, art critic of the Globe and Mail.

In Cowley Abbott's Live Auction of Important Canadian & International Art, Nov. 27, 2024, Lot ##83 Variation on a Variation (1957), oil and lucite on board, 48.25 x 45 in (122.6 x 114.3 cm), Auction Estimate: $18,000.00 - $22,000.00 realized a price of $66,000.00.