Edna Taçon, Improvisation No. 2, 1946. Watercolour and ink on paper, Overall: 38.8 × 27.6 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Purchase, 1947. © Estate of Edna Taçon. Photo: AGO. 2879
Located on Level 1 in Gallery #140- 141
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A prominent figure in the Toronto and New York City art worlds throughout the 1940s, Edna Taçon had a crucial impact on the development of abstract painting in Canada. Inspired by Wassily Kandinsky’s theories on abstraction and colour, her paintings and works on paper are characterized by floating compositions, flowing lines, and luminous forms rendered through a loose blending of colours. Featuring more than 25 oil paintings, watercolours, and paper collages from the 1940s, this exhibition highlights Taçon’s intuitive approach and invention. Canada’s leading proponent of non-objective art, her rarely seen works and archival materials come to the AGO courtesy the artist's family, and from lenders across Canada. Curated by Renée van der Avoird, AGO Associate Curator of Canadian Art, the exhibition will be accompanied by a hardcover catalogue, co-published by Goose Lane Editions.
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American-born, but raised in Canada, Edna Taçon (1905–1980) was a trained violinist who considered music and abstraction as similarly intuitive and creative pursuits and wrote about the “sublime summit” attainable by both. She exhibited her collages and paintings throughout the 1940s, splitting her time between Toronto and New York. In 1941, she received a Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Scholarship, which allowed her to work and exhibit in group shows at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). The museum has subsequently acquired five of her paintings. Concurrently, in Ontario, Taçon exhibited at the Hamilton Women's Art Association and The Art Gallery of Toronto (now Art Gallery of Ontario). The AGO purchased her watercolour Improvisation No. 2 in 1947. She was a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Canadian Group of Painters. Today, her work can be found in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa.
