"Harold Town has been called the 'Picasso of Canadian art' and is clearly something of a legend in his own time"- William Withrow, art critic

Harold Barling Town was born in Toronto and studied at the Western Technical School and the Ontario College of Art. He was first recognized for his illustrations in Maclean's magazine and for his membership in "Painters Eleven", a group of radical artists that exhibited in the late fifties. This group of Toronto abstract exressionist painters which included Jack Bush and William Ronald took their cues from contemporary post-war Amercian artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothe, and Willem de Kooning.

Town is recognized as a seminal figure in the development and popularization of abstract art in the Fifties and Sixties in English Canada. A prolific and tireless experimenter, Harold Town was well known for his dramatic murals and his bold prints and collages. He was also known for his colorful, bombastic statements, caustic wit, confrontational manner, and his hyperbolic remarks about art. Town once stated: "I paint to defy death"

"His ability as a draftsman is undisputed and his single autographic prints, produced between 1955 and 1957, were surely among the most beautiful art objects ever made by a Canadian artist."-William Withrow

In 1957, Harold Town was awarded, jointly with another artist, a prize for his prints at the Bienal of San Paulo. Redkettle's print entitled "Gentleman" is from this period and is signed and numbered.

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