Provenance
Laing Galleries, Toronto

Exhibited
Feb. 1961, Harold Town: Paintings, Collages and Prints, Laing Galleries, Toronto

In his second exhibition at the Laing Galleries, opening February 1961, neither Town nor the gallery director, G. Blair Laing (the founder’s son), could have anticipated the response to Town’s paintings, collages and prints. Invited guests lined up on the sidewalk outside before the show opened, and Town had to push his way through the crowd to get into the gallery. The number and size of the works astounded people. Collectors fought over pictures; the art dealer Dorothy Cameron called it “acquisitive madness.” Both the Art Gallery of Toronto and the Cleveland Museum made purchases. Numerous financial institutions and legal firms bought their first Abstract Expressionist artworks for their corporate collections from this exhibition. Thirty works sold in the first two hours, for an unprecedented $20,000, with three-quarters of the exhibition selling before the end of its two-week run.

William Withrow, then chief curator of the Art Gallery of Toronto, declared that it was one of the most exciting events in Toronto’s art history and that there had never been anything like it.

Harold Town, Iris Nowell, 2014.