Tony Urquhart (photo by Marie Marshall, Wiki Commons)
Tony Urquhart, a well-known Ontario artist has died. He was 87.
Urquhart, born in 1934 in Niagara Falls, had early success as an abstract painter, later moving to representation and sculpture. He taught at the University of Western Ontario and then, starting in 1972, the University of Waterloo, where he retired in 1999.
Urquhart helped establish Canadian Artists Representation, or CARFAC, sometimes known as the artists' union, with Ontario artists Jack Chambers and Kim Ondaatje.
He participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, and in the United States and Europe. His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
In 2002, the University of Waterloo mounted Revenants: Long Shadows, a retrospective of his paintings. The following year saw a major touring exhibition, Power of Invention: the Drawings of Tony Urquhart from Seven Decades, at the London Regional Art Museum and the National Gallery of Canada.
Urquhart was awarded the Order of Canada in 1995, and is a recipient of a 2009 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.
He died on Jan. 26, from complications related to a fall. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2017, but had maintained a creative practice.
He is survived by his wife, Jane, a novelist, and four children, including Emily, who wrote the 2020 book, The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, My Father, and Me.
A memorial service is planned for the late spring.
Source: legacy.com, Toronto Globe and Mail
