Lot 21: Ray John Mead, CGP, CSGA (Canadian, 1921-1998) Squeeze Sun

Squeeze Sun
signed and dates 'Ray Mead 1964' on the reverse, titled on label on the reverse
oil on canvas
165 x 165cm (64 15/16 x 64 15/16in).

Provenance:
With Galerie du Siécle, Montreal.
Estate of the artist, and by descent through the family.

British born Ray Mead studied at the Slade School of Art in London, England. During the Second World War, Mead, who served as an R.A.F. pilot, was stationed in Hamilton, Ontario. He elected to remain in Canada after the war. In the late 1940's, he moved to Toronto to become the director of an advertising firm and there came to know some of the artists with whom he would be associated through the next decade. While Mead is perhaps best remembered as a member of the Toronto-based Painters 11, by the time "Sqeeze Sun" was executed in 1964, the group had disbanded and Mead's style had evolved into one that had "shed much of his Britishness under the influence of both American painting" (particularly Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline) "and the Plasticiennes of Montreal", the city to which Mead had relocated in 1958.
LITERATURE: Roald Nasgaard,Abstract Painting in Canada,2007,page 106.