Greg Curnoe
GREG CURNOE "JAPANESE LABELS" COLLAGE, 1964
Greg Curnoe (1936-1992) was a highly revered artist, bookmaker, and competitive cyclist based in London, Ontario, but beloved across the country. He represented Canada in the 1976 Venice Biennale.
Unwavering in his allegiance to the Canadian/local art scene, Curnoe led the London Regionalism movement alongside fellow artists such as Jack Chambers, Tony Urquhart, and Murray Favro. Together, they championed their hometown of London, Ontario by focusing on local life in their art, activism, and loyalty.
Curnoe worked in many mediums throughout his career, notably collage. He was inspired by Cubism and Dada, appreciating their use of found objects, text, and assemblage to express anarchy, humour, anti-war sentiments, while flirting with conceptualism. Using found ephemera—bus tokens, labels, paper scraps from the streets, checks—Curnoe embraced collage by assembling the detritus into compositions and applying stamps or stencils on top. By incorporating banal elements from his daily life he simultaneously aligned himself with the early practitioners of Pop Art.
This collage is a fine example of Curnoe’s early forays into Pop Art. Featuring admission tickets, coupons, a ticket for the Detroit Tigers, Cigar packaging, a painted wooden shard, an ID for the RCAF, among other, less identifiable fragments, this collage is not lacking when it comes to offering an entertaining smorgasbord of content. Despite the random nature of the elements, Curnoe unites these fragments into an enticing composition. The oval form is another nod to Cubism. This is early Greg Curnoe at his best.
Greg Curnoe’s works can be found in numerous public and private collections across Canada. The most significant collections are at Museum London, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. The Art Gallery of Ontario holds the archives of Greg Curnoe.
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“Japanese Labels”
Canada, 1964
Collage on paper
13”H 9.5”W (work)
17”H 13”W (framed)
Very good condition.
Provenance:
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Tony Urquhart
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