Tony Urquhart is a pioneer of abstract painting, well known for his “box” sculptures. He was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 1934. He studied at the Albright Art School at the State University of New York, Buffalo from 1954 to 1958, where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. He attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School in New Haven in 1955 and was the University of Western Ontario’s first artist-in-residence in 1960.

When he was only 22 years old, Urquhart exhibited his works at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto. His works were shown alongside those of the London Group, which included Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe and Murray Favro. He worked in a variety of mediums, such as painting and drawing, although he is best known for the series of “box” sculptures that he began in 1965.

Together with Kim Ondaatje, Urquhart joined CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representation / Le Front des artistes canadiens), founded by Jack Chambers in 1967. The three artists worked together to establish a fee structure for public museum and gallery exhibitions of contemporary artists. Urquhart also taught drawing, painting and printmaking at the University of Waterloo in Ontario in 1972.

Urquhart was named to the Order of Canada in 1995 and was the winner of the 2009 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. His works are featured in many important private and public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Hirshhorn Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.