1936-1992

Representing the estate of Greg Curnoe

Currently available works. Please contact the gallery for prices and information on appraisals and sale of your artwork.

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Greg Curnoe is widely acclaimed as one of Canada’s most important artists.  His works are found in major public and private collections across Canada and can be seen regularly in extended installations at such galleries as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Vancouver Art Gallery and Museum London, Ontario.

Born in London, Ontario and following studies in London and Toronto, Curnoe centred his studio practice in London, focusing on his surrounds, family and friends.  In 1962 he organized a seminal ‘happening’, The Celebration, at the London Art Museum.  The event was attended by Joyce Weiland, Michael Snow, and Michel Sanouillet among others. In his third edition of A Concise History of Canadian Painting, Dennis Reid states:  ”The Celebration in a way set the tone for all of Curnoe’s work, which is, before anything else, a celebration.  For him the ordinary hardly exists.  The world can open out from a single observation or reflection made in his home or studio.  In his painting Curnoe usually focuses on an event of deep personal significance—”

In the essay for the London, Ontario section of the extensive exhibition Traffic, focusing on Conceptual Art, Justina M. Barnicke’s director and curator, Barbara Fischer writes:

“Curnoe’s concerns as an artist were autobiographical and firmly grounded in his experience of the immediate and the local; they also evolved from the anarchist, anti-establishment, delinquent and anti-bourgeois tendencies of the Neo-Dada supported within the artistic circles surrounding Toronto art dealer Avrom Isaacs. By 1962, Curnoe was already making works consisting exclusively of text, creating inventories through impersonal, administrative measures that would come to preoccupy conceptual art, such as utilizing ink stamps or measuring devices to chronicle day-to-day routines. In 1973, the American critic John Chandler claimed that Curnoe had been making conceptual and process art before these terms were coined.”

Following is an excerpt from the press release for the exhibition, Sheila, Colour Wheels and The Great Canadian Sonnet, at WTG May,2012;

“Curnoe’s work often chronicled his place, family and surrounds. Members of his family were often the subjects of his paintings and in particular his wife, Sheila. Included in the exhibition are two rarely seen major paintings of Sheila. Also featured in the show is the important work Large Colour Wheel. Curnoe’s intense interest in the circle and wheels, colour and bicycles, continued throughout his life. His passion for these themes intermingle in this very significant work.”

Exhibitions from 2002-2012: on the archived WTG site.