Antonio Tascona (16 March 1926 – 28 May 2006) was a Canadian artist of Italian heritage, best known for his abstract ''constructions'' featuring metallic panels made of aluminum, steel, resin, and industrial paints and lacquers. Tascona's employment in the aircraft industry as a technician taught him the techniques used in his mature work featuring geometric abstraction. His work hangs in numerous public institutions in and throughout Canada. He was appointed to the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...

in 1996.

Early life and education

Tascona was born the fifteenth of sixteen children in the predominantly francophone town of St Boniface, Manitoba, before it was incorporated into

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Manitoba. It is centred on the confluence of the Red River of the North, Red and Assiniboine River, Assiniboine rivers. , Winnipeg h ...

in 1971. Tascona left school and became a truck-driver at age 15 in order to support his family after his father's death. When he was seventeen his mother died and he would be conscripted into the Canadian Army at 18, but never deployed overseas. In 1946, Tascona enrolled in the Winnipeg School of Art through the Department of Veterans' Affairs. His instructor Joe Plaskett introduced him to Hans Hofmann's theories on

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

. After receiving his diploma, he continued his education at the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a public research university in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1877, it is the first university of Western Canada. Both by total student enrolment and campus area, the University of ...

School of Art and was there exposed to other modernist movements such as

Vorticism Vorticism was a London-based Modernism, modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist mani ...

. In 1953 Tascona began work as a technician for

Trans-Canada Airlines Trans-Canada Air Lines (also known as TCA in English, and Trans-Canada in French) was a Canadian airline that operated as the country's flag carrier, with corporate headquarters in Montreal, Quebec. Its first president was Gordon McGregor (busin ...

where he developed his skills and interest in working with a variety of industrial techniques and materials including a fascination with aluminum, high-grade paints, lacquers and enamels. This formation of interest extended to his brother's auto-body garage, where Tascona became interested in the use of car paint, borrowing paint chips and supplies for use in his own studio. In 1961, Tascona moved to Montreal where he became acquainted with the works of

Les plasticiens The Plasticien movement was a Canadian non-figurative painting movement, which appeared around 1955 in Quebec. It was a more orderly style of painting in reaction to Les Automatistes In 1954, a young critic and painter newly returned from Paris, ...

artists such as Guido Molinari and

Claude Tousignant Claude Tousignant (born December 23, 1932, in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian artist. Tousignant is considered to be an important contributor to the development of geometric abstraction in Canada. He masterly used alternating values of complemen ...

for what he called their "direct, more mathematical, more geometric approach.” In 1965, Tascona was introduced to the theories of

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

by William Townsend. However Tascona was not interested in the explicitly political elements inherent to Constructivism. Nonetheless Tascona was inspired by Tatlin's prediction that the art of the future would be synthesised with principles of technology and construction.

Development of constructions

Utilizing the skills he learned in the aircraft industry, Tascona began in the late 1960s and would continue throughout the 70's and 80's to produce large format constructions built from incised metal sheets painted with industrial strength paints and lacquers giving these works a sculptural, frieze-like quality while still possessing certain modernist formal elements. An early example is Tascona's first major commission in 1963 for the Manitoba

Centennial Concert Hall Centennial Concert Hall is a 2,305-seat performing arts centre located at 555 Main Street in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as part of the Manitoba Centennial Centre. The concert hall opened on March 25, 1968. It is the performing home o ...

which still hangs in situ today. This was his first construction and consisted of two ten by sixteen foot constructions consisting of numerous layered sheets of aluminium and painted using his unique industry-inspired technique.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tascona, Tony 1926 births 2006 deaths Artists from Winnipeg Technicians Canadian people of Italian descent People from St. Boniface, Winnipeg Canadian truck drivers 20th-century Canadian artists Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Sculptors from Manitoba Canadian male sculptors Canadian abstract artists University of Manitoba alumni