Tony Urquhart began his career as a painter. Some of his earliest work includes landscapes such as Primavera, 1957. His association with Av Isaacs, the owner of the Isaacs Gallery (one of Toronto’s most cutting-edge art venues which emerged in the mid 1950’s). In 1956, Isaacs asked Urquhart to join his growing stable of artists, including Michael Snow, Joyce Weiland and Graham Coughtry. Urquhart had his first works shown at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto when he was only 22. He also had a one-man show in January 1957 and a second in November of the same year with Isaacs. At the time, Urquhart’s influence was from Buffalo, directly from the New York Abstract Expressionists and in 1956 the influence of this movement was still new to the Toronto public.[3]

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

Urquhart lived in Niagara Falls until September 1960 when he went to London to be the first artist-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario. The university’s McIntosh Art Gallery was the first university art gallery in Ontario, and opened in 1942, but it wasn’t until Urquhart was appointed artist-in-residence that the gallery really took off. Essentially, Urquhart ran the place for four years starting in 1960, mounting approximately ten shows each year. Urquhart was one of a handful of artists responsible for generating the excitement and community engagement that garnered national acclaim for the growing London art scene during the late 1960s. Having an artist at the centre of the McIntosh Gallery’s curatorial operations was indicative of the broader regional trend towards empowered artists, culminating in 1968 with the formation of CARFAC. The organization successfully established a fee structure for public museum and gallery exhibitions of contemporary artists. Urquhart stayed at the University of Western Ontario in a teaching capacity until 1972 when he joined the faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo, where he remained for three decades, retiring in 1999.[4]

Tony Urquhart’s first major retrospective, Reunion, was mounted by the London Regional Art Gallery in 1970, subsequent to which he began to serve widely on juries and, along with Jack Chambers, was consulted concerning the establishment of the Canada Council’s Art Bank collection. Other retrospective exhibitions were presented at the Art Gallery of Kitchener (1978) and the Art Gallery of Windsor (1988), both of which toured extensively from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Urquhart also became involved in the literary scene. He 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. A similar book, Sketch Book,was published by The Isaacs Gallery, 1962.

He also worked in book illustration which put him in collaboration with such authors as his wife Jane, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, Matt Cohen Stuart MacKinnon and Louis Dudek. His work is found in the permanent collections of such institutions as New York’s Museum of Modern Art; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England; the Hirshhorn Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Bibliotèc National in Paris; the Museo Civico in Lugano; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Tony Urquhart was named to the Order of Canada in 1995. He is the winner of the 2009 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and the CARFAC Outstanding Contribution Award.[1]