Provenance:

Isaacs Gallery, Toronto.
Private Collection, Toronto.

Literature:

William Kurelek, O Toronto, Paintings and Notes by William Kurelek, Toronto, 1973, plate 13, reproduced in colour.
William Kurelek, Someone With Me, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1973, pages 207-226.
William Kurelek – The Messenger, The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria/The Art Gallery of Hamilton/The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2011, pages 19-21, chapter by Avrom Isaacs entitled “Knowing Kurelek”.

Note:

William Kurelek’s initial experiences of life in Toronto were not positive. The artist moved to the city to attend the Ontario College of Art and was dismayed that the Bachelor of Arts degree he had earned from University of Manitoba did not allow him to land ‘a white collar job almost at once’. Working day and night in menial positions, including jobs in construction and dry cleaning, Kurelek regarded his early weeks in the metropolis as a “dark tunnel”. However, the misery of his early work life slowly began to change as Kurelek’s confidence began to grow in his new surroundings, his feeling of being a “misfit” slowly subsiding and leading to new and lasting friendships with select coworkers. Kurelek’s time at OCAD proved to be short, the artist deciding to leave soon after his enrolment in autumn of 1949. Kurelek felt that the school “didn’t have the creative ferment or atmosphere, or whatever its called, for a dedicated fine artist, and that’s what I thought I was”. Soon after the painter decided to “set out” “on a long journey – in search of myself as an artist”.

“The Toronto that had been so cold to me when I arrived turned out to be like the person who was cruel, only to be kind the next time. Not only had I come to like it – I even loved it in part. I decided then – the decision later showed much foresight – that if I ever settled in Canada it would be in Toronto. I’m unable to discern whether it was the friends I made, even in that short space of one year, who drew me close to it or whether it was its streets and houses and its flora.” Kurelek would not return permanently to Toronto for more than a decade, his travels taking him first to Mexico and later throughout Europe, the experiences of the years abroad presenting the artist with life-changing experiences, the themes of which resonate through the painters most renowned work.

William Kurelek’s re-settlement in Toronto would lead to the personal and artistic success and validation which he had sought. Soon after his return to the city, William met Jean Andrews, the two marrying less than a year later. The couple lived in Toronto for the rest of the artist’s life, raising their four children on Balsam Avenue in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. Kurelek also met Av Isaacs early in his Toronto return, approaching the gallery owner for a job as a framer, bringing “along three of his framed paintings to demonstrate his ability”. Issacs remembered that he “immediately realized that [Kurelek]’s frames were very good, but the paintings they contained were the work of an extremely gifted artist”. Kurelek would hold the first of many solo exhibitions at Isaacs Gallery in 1960.

In O Toronto, Kurelek presents a selection of works depicting scenes his family’s home city, the artist describing each of the paintings in varying details. Discussing Handel’s Messiah at Massey Hall within the publication, the artist recalled, “I’m fond of classical music, particularly of oratorios, and Toronto, like many other big cities, has a cultural life which I would really miss if I were to settle on the farm or in a small town. Granted I do fall asleep during operas when I go to them with my wife, who is an opera and symphony enthusiast. But the performances of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Massey Hall do grip me. Apart from the Hallelujah chorus, there are several other high points in the Messiah which particularly elevate man’s spirit. One of these, the bass aria ‘the trumpet shall sound,’ makes me feel good all over. I guess this is not only because it speaks of the Resurrection, which I personally look forward to, but also the cultural richness of the past.”

In the introduction to O Toronto, James Bacque writes that “William Kurelek has succeeded in bringing to Toronto from the utterly different environment of the prairies all his truth and haranguing power, even the sense of powerful forces in nature that change man. The light is different here, you think, the landscape, the people and their concerns and activities, but William Kurelek paints in Toronto as if the city were his”.