Off Church Street (1980) captures an everyday view of Toronto that reflects John Kasyn’s deep interest in the city’s older neighbourhoods. Rather than focusing on grand landmarks, Kasyn often painted the streets and houses that people passed without noticing, the lived-in spaces that gave the city its character. His careful attention to structure and perspective suggests both an artist and an observer committed to recording a Toronto that was rapidly changing by the late twentieth century.
John Kasyn (1926–2008) was a Polish-born Canadian artist best known for his evocative depictions of Toronto’s neighbourhoods, historic homes, and urban backdrops. Born in Poland, he immigrated with his family to Winnipeg in 1938 and then to Toronto in 1940, where he began formal artistic training at the Winnipeg Museum during public school before studying at Central Technical School and the Ontario College of Art. His work is distinguished by a nostalgic fascination with the city’s architectural heritage, particularly the rear views of houses and laneways that reveal daily life through clotheslines, fences, lean-tos, and other small details often overlooked by others.
Kasyn exhibited regularly with the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) and the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC), winning the Gold Medal at the Annual Exhibition of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1966 and earning recognition across Canada and beyond. His works became valued not only for their technical skill but also for their role in preserving visual records of Toronto’s mid-20th-century built environment, buildings and streetscapes that were rapidly changing through redevelopment. His paintings are held in public and private collections, including the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and continue to be appreciated as time capsules of a city’s history and character.