Greg Curnoe was born in 1936 at the Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario, and grew up surrounded by a large extended family and many friends. He demonstrated an early interest in art, and his talents were nurtured in the Special Art Program at H.B. Beal Technical and Commercial High School. With the exception of three unhappy years at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto he lived and worked in London for his entire life. Passionately committed to his city, he championed local art and culture, and became one of Canada’s best-known artists.
In May, 1960, Curnoe returned home after failing his final year at the Ontario College of Art. Determined to make a full-time living as an artist, he set up the first of several studios in London. His studio immediately became a meeting place for young artists who chafed against the conservative climate of the city, and Curnoe became the central figure in a new, more hip cultural milieu. On 3 February, 1962, Curnoe organized The Celebration, Canada’s first ‘happening’, at the London Public Library and Art Museum. The event, which drew esteemed artists and intellectuals from Toronto, included a Dadaistic costume parade through the city’s streets, the communal construction of a large wooden installation in the gallery, and the general disruption of the city’s cultural status quo. Although it only lasted a single night, The Celebration shook the very core of London’s art establishment and from this point forward Curnoe was generally considered to be the leader of the city’s arts scene.
Curious and creative, Curnoe worked in a variety of media: he explored painting, drawing, printmaking, collages, assemblages and filmmaking, all the while expounding on the issues and ideas that were important to him. The Dada-inspired Hurdle for Art Lovers (1962) was an ironic expression of his feelings about the state of culture in Canada at the time. The construction was made of found objects with stamped text dedicating the work to a number of sporting and cultural figures (among them Charles Comfort, the then-director of the National Gallery). The framework of scrap wood and metal supported a menacing phalanx of knives, tools, and knitting needles. Only the most determined art lover would risk castration to hurdle such a dangerous object.
During the 1960s Curnoe and his friends engaged in a number of anarchistic fraternal antics. In reaction to the 1963 provincial election he plastered the city with posters that exhorted the public to “Vote Nihilist: Destroy Your Ballot”. The main target of Curnoe’s campaign was John Robarts, Premier of Ontario and the local Conservative candidate. The following year he reused the image in Dada/Mother (1964), two drawings for the first annual banquet of the newly formed Nihilist Party of London. This time, the works lampooned both Robarts and Clare Bice – the equally conservative director of the London Art Gallery.
Curnoe’s comprehensive knowledge of art history was reflected inventively in his own work. His brightly coloured works of the 1960s were often classified as Pop art, yet while many of his paintings shared stylistic elements with Pop art, Curnoe did not embrace the movement’s preoccupation with consumer culture and mass consumption. Instead, works like Feeding Percy (1965), were much more personal. Juxtaposing intimate images of his new wife Sheila and their pet bird with highly specific textual references to boxing, the work reflected the artist’s daily life and interests. Its colourful roundels also paid an artistic tribute to the French Cubist Robert Delauney, a figure much admired by Curnoe.
By the mid-1960s Curnoe was becoming known outside London. In the spring of 1966 Pierre Théberge, the eager young assistant curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada, visited the artist’s studio. During the visit Curnoe showed Théberge his work-in-progress: The Camouflaged Piano or French Roundels (1965-66). The multi-media assemblage combined painting, stamped text, found objects (including a hotel sign encrusted with bird droppings salvaged from the Richmond Hotel in London), and electrical lights in a jubilant expression of the artist’s varied interests. Friends and local musicians Peter Denney and Alex Kelly jostled for space with imagery and text dealing with jazz, aviation, war, and art. Théberge was bewitched by the artist and recommended the purchase of The Camouflaged Piano or French Roundels for the gallery’s collection. This marked the start of a long and fruitful relationship between Curnoe and the National Gallery and signaled Curnoe’s entrance into the Canadian art mainstream.
In 1967 Curnoe received a prestigious public commission to complete a mural for one of the passenger tunnels at the newly built Montreal International Air Terminal Building in Dorval. Curnoe’s instructions were to portray the present state of culture in Canada, instructions that he interpreted in his own idiosyncratic way. The large-scale Homage to the R 34 (1967-68) consisted of 26 painted galvanized iron panels depicting three gondolas of the British dirigible R 34 (the first airship to make the east-west transatlantic crossing). Situated in the gondolas were historical figures such as the R 34’s captain, Major George Herbert Scott, Louis Riel, Henrich Mathy (a World War I Zeppelin Commander), along with friends of the artist and members of his family. The first panel to be installed included a textual reference to Mohammed Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam. No sooner had the offending panel been installed than complaints about the anti-American content began to pour in. The text was covered over and, when Curnoe refused to modify the work to the satisfaction of the Department of Transport, the entire mural was removed. The ensuing press coverage brought national attention to the artist.
By the late 1960s Curnoe was being fêted on the international stage. In 1969 he was selected by the National Gallery of Canada as one of three artists representing Canada at the São Paulo X Biennale. One of the works exhibited in Brazil was The True North Strong and Free, nos. 1-5 (1968), a five panel stamped textual piece that detailed Canada’s inferiority complex and ambivalent relationship to the United States. Articulating the feelings of many Canadians, Curnoe proposed that Canada Close the 49th Parallel, Etc.
Greg Curnoe was one of the most outspoken and provocative Canadian artists of the 1960s. In the space of a single decade he ascended to the apex of the Canadian art world. His boundless energy, keen intellect, and irreverent sense of humour led him to create artworks that transcended traditional artistic boundaries, stimulated debates and articulated the ethos of his generation.
– Katie Cholette