Lot 109: GREG RICHARD CURNOE 1936 - 1992

MARIPOSA T.T.
engraved u.r.; 6/30 SERIGRAPH DEC. 1978, signed: G. Curnoe, APR. 1979

106.5 by 167.5 cm. 42½ by 66½ in.

serigraph on plexiglass

Pierre Theberge, Greg Curnoe, The National Gallery of Canada, 1982 p. 50, illustrated, p. 186

Gary Michael Dault, The Globe and Mail, February 7, 1975

Canadian Paraplegic Association, Ontario

Greg Curnoe's twenty-seven colour serigraphs of bicycles are icons of Canadian Art. Although his work is often aligned with the wit of Pop art sensibilities, he retains a distinctly different vocabulary. As Gary Michael Dault pointed out in a column in 1975:

It is in the very particularity of his subject matter that Curnoe remains his own man. Pop artists paint universal, generalized, and frequently banal objects. Curnoe, by contrast, paints the local, personal and absorbing objects and events that make up his life.

Cycling was a critical element of Curnoe's identity and, tragically, a factor in his premature death.