Tony Urquhart

"Actually, my grandmother was quite a strong influence throughout my life. She was an artist in the sense that she liked landscaping the grounds of our house, which were considerable, given the fact that we lived in the centre of the town of Niagara Falls on half an acre. She had ponds made; there was a wood; there was an old barn in the back of the house. It was like an oasis of quiet".[1]

Between 1954 and 1958 Urquhart was trained at Yale University summer school (1955). He also attended the Albright Art School (1955) and showed with the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York.[1] Afterwards, he attended the University at Buffalo, New York, graduating in 1958.[1]

Urquhart's influence was directly from the New York Abstract Expressionists and in 1956 the influence of this movement was still new to the Toronto public.[2]

Object On a Red Ground. A painting by Canadian artist Tony Urquhart. 1965.

He exhibited at the Isaacs Gallery and The Heart of London group that included Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe and Murray Favro. [citations needed]

Since the 1960's. Urquhart’s art has centred upon his 'box' format.[3] In 1968, with Jack Chambers and Kim Ondaatje, he helped found Canadian Artists' Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC) that first established a fee schedule for public museum and gallery exhibitions of contemporary artists.[4][5]

Urquhart taught at the University of Western Ontario until 1972 when he joined the faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo, retiring in 1999.[6]

Urquhart's first major retrospective, Reunion, was mounted by the London Regional Art Gallery in 1970. [citation needed]. Along with Jack Chambers, he was consulted concerning the establishment of the Canada Council's Art Bank collection. [citation needed]

Other retrospective exhibitions were presented at the Kitchener-Waterloo Gallery (1978) and the Art Gallery of Windsor (1988), both of which toured extensively from Newfoundland to British Columbia.[3]

Urquhart also collaborated with Gary Michael Dault on the making of Cells of Ourselves: Drawings by Tony Urquhart, as well as Off the Wall, a hundred and three idea-drawings for boxes with commentary by Michael Phillips. [citation needed] Sketch Book, was published by The Isaacs Gallery, 1962.[3]

His work is in the permanent collections of such public institutions as New York's Museum of Modern Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris; the Museo Civico in Lugano; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.[3]

Pavillion. A box sculpture by Canadian artist Tony Urquhart. 2014.

Urquhart's first box was in 1965, a tiny 4 in × 5 in (100 mm × 130 mm) construction called the Decadent Cube. Dorothy Cameron wrote that it was 'the first box to directly indicate an interior.' [citation needed] For Urquhart, “Every object I have ever made was just naturally meant to be painted' and continued to think of himself as a landscape painter.”[7]

In 1967 he went to Europe to study reliquaries, altar pieces, even a three-foot religious statues that he began to make.[8]

The boxes have hinged doors that give viewers access to interiors, along with Urquhart's brightly painted exteriors.[9]

By thinking about what's inside the box he is encouraging viewers to think outside the box.[10]

Tony Urquhart was named to the Order of Canada in 1995. [citation needed] He was the winner of the 2009 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, and the CARFAC Outstanding Contribution Award.[3] In 2016, he was given an LL.D. by Carleton University, Ottawa.[11]

Urquhart's first marriage was in 1958. In 1976, Urquhart married the Canadian novelist and poet Jane Urquhart. In 2020, Emily Urquhart wroteThe Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father, and Me (House of Anansi).[12]

He died from complications of a fall on January 26, 2022, at the age of 87.[13]

• "Tony Urquhart fonds". University of Waterloo Library. Special Collections & Archives. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
• Tony Urquhart Idea Book at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario