Prop-Cycle, 1973

Collection of the Artist Collection of The Winnipeg Art Gallery ,1974

"Tascona: Lacquer on Aluminum and Mixed Media", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 21 January-3 March 1974 "Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 24 April -1 September 1974 "Skylight Lounge Filler", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 23 December 1975- 16 February 1976 "Winnipeg Art Gallery Collection", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 25 June- 12 September 1976 "Offices, Edmond Préfontaine", Manitoba, 18 September 1979- 8 February 1982 "Contemporary Art from the Winnipeg Art Gallery Collection", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 5-22 April 1984 "Stored Secrets: The Vault on View", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 11 September -27 November 1994 "Tony Tascona: Resonance", The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 24 May-16 September 2001, no. 21 "Government House", Winnipeg, Manitoba, 5 October 2001-23 April 2002, no. 21 "Tony Tascona In Memoriam", The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 20 May 2006- 24 August 2006 "The Collection on View (to accompany the 2013 Gallery Ball)", Winnipeg Art Gallery, 11-20 October 2013

Ferdinand Eckhardt, Tascona; Lacquer on Aluminum, Winnipeg, 1974 Patricia E. Bovey, Tony "Tascona: Resonance", Winnipeg, 2001, no. 21, reproduced page 66 as "Untitled (Prop-Cycle)", 1973 Justin Barski 'Constructing New Horizons: The Art of Winnipeg Modernist Tony Tascona', "The Arbutus Review", Fall 2014, Vol. 5, No. 1, reproduced page 234

Born in St. Boniface, Manitoba in 1926, Tony Tascona graduated from the Winnipeg School of Art in 1950. His early style was rich with glazes and impastos, and expressionistic with diverse surface textures. To support himself as an artist, Tascona took a job with Canadian Aerospace Industries and, later, with Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada). Here in these industrial environments, the artist became interested in plastics, metals, and lacquers: the synthetic materials and industrial products that went on to inform his work. Tascona explored and exploited the manipulative possibilities of industrial materials, appropriating their visual and practical elements and combining them with a graphic sensibility. He worked with brilliantly coloured printer's inks, including fiery reds, acidic purples, and lucid greens. In 1962 Tascona relocated to Montreal, meeting Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant, whose hard-edge colour painting aligned with his own interest in geometric work. His work moved away from its dense, organic nature to more crisp lines, in lacquered colours on aluminum surfaces. After two years in Montreal, Tascona returned to Winnipeg and began to simplify his compositions, aiming at absolute control of forms. He continued his exploration of shape and space into the 1970s, including "Prop-Cycle", 1973, in shades of yellow and ochre synonymous with the decade. This artwork is being sold to benefit the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG)-Qaumajuq in establishing an endowment fund to support more diverse representation in the permanent collection, beginning with contemporary Canadian art. Cowley Abbott is pleased to donate our selling commission to the fund as part of the sale.