Dozens of black-and-white photographs lining the walls of the bright hallway leading to the public washrooms and the management office at Cloverdale Mall offer a glimpse into the mall’s 70-year history. Among the images are Robert Roussil’s towering sculpture, Human Galaxy, and Joseph Gause’s playful concrete creation, the Snail, enjoyed by a generation of youngsters outside the Dominion Store.
Jack Reppen‘s untitled 1960 twelve-metre abstract oil painting is absent. Reppen, once admired for his public murals, was briefly a fixture on the Toronto arts scene. Today his large-scale wall paintings appear to have all vanished.
With Cloverdale’s future in the air after the mall’s current owner, QuadReal Property Group, paused redevelopment of the site into a 32-acre mixed-use community last year because of a market downturn, the Star visited the mall to see whether Reppen’s art still existed and stumbled upon a hotbed of creativity.
The first step in locating Reppen’s mural was contacting QuadReal staff. Administrative assistant Holly West explained that the “mural is no longer visible at the mall.” Given how much time had passed since its installation, West said no one was available to discuss Reppen’s masterpiece.
No longer visible doesn’t mean no longer present. West’s response warranted a visit to the suburban shopping mall.
Art collector Benjamin Dunkelman, the real estate developer behind Cloverdale Mall’s 1956 construction, insisted the mall’s design include public art. Four years later, Dunkelman, who also owned Tip Top Tailors, commissioned Reppen to create a mural for the store during the mall’s 1960 expansion, depicting components of the tailoring industry on five Masonite panels. At the time, Reppen was on the cusp of international stardom, his name mentioned in the same breath as Canadian artists Harold Town and William Ronald.
Reppen’s appearance on the art scene was meteoric. Sketching since childhood, he began contributing caricatures of prominent sports and entertainment figures to the Star, Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s while attending Northern Secondary School, where he studied to be an electrician. The freelance gig lasted more than a decade. After graduating high school, he joined the city payroll repairing traffic lights and painting lines on Toronto streets but found the work uninspiring.
To shake things up, he became Art Director at Prudential Insurance Co. and enrolled in evening courses at the Ontario College of Art. During this time, he worked brutal hours, painting late into the night.
By 1959, accolades began to accumulate. At 26, he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery Moos, the first Canadian artist to be exhibited at the prestigious Yorkville gallery. Now married with two children, Reppen travelled to Mexico and France for inspiration. His work was exhibited across Canada, the United States and the U.K. and actor and art collector Vincent Price championed his work.
Architect and patron of the arts John B. Parkin described Reppen as “a man’s painter … strong, earthy and powerful.” A critic compared his work to that of French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet.
Within a year of his first exhibit, he received multiple commissions, including a large mural for Prudential Insurance Co.‘s fourth-floor lobby at its new King Street West headquarters, as well as murals for the Constellation Hotel, Ports of Call and Tip Top Tailors at Cloverdale Mall.
Over time, Cloverdale Mall has experienced numerous transformations. Initially an outdoor plaza, it was enclosed in the 1980s. Tip Top Tailors departed the following decade. Finding the retailer’s original location took some doing. When the employee at the information desk couldn’t help, seniors chatting in the food court suggested asking staff at Taylor Somers, the men’s clothing shop that has operated since the mall’s earliest days. The proprietor, an impeccably dressed haberdasher with a sewing tape measure slung around his neck, paused from serving a customer to explain that Tip Top Tailors used to be across from his shop.
Questioned about the Reppen’s mural drew a blank.
Today Cloverdale Commons is located where Tip Top Tailors used to be. Half the space is a publicly accessible area where patrons can read about QuadReal’s plan for the 32-acre property. Since 2019, Arts Etobicoke has used the other half of Cloverdale Commons to provide community arts programming, a gallery and a drop-in.
A thorough examination of the premises revealed no Reppen mural. Could it have been inadvertently concealed during past renovations or removed and placed in storage? A followup inquiry to Holly West at QuadReal received a friendly but curt email stating they have no additional information to share.
Atiya Hassan, Program and Community Engagement Coordinator at Arts Etobicoke, was intrigued to learn about Jack Reppen and the mural installed in this space, “I’m going to share this with staff.”
Hassan’s co-worker, Sair Raut, Operations Coordinator with the community agency, was thrilled to learn about Reppen’s connection to the space, explaining, “It adds another layer of history and meaning to the space that is already rich with art and community activity.”
QuadReal provides the space rent-free and contributes financially to art classes, the gallery and staffing.
As swift as Reppen’s ascent was, his demise was just as sudden. The artist entered hospital for cancer treatment in the autumn of 1963, followed by post-surgery bed rest. Two weeks after he resumed painting, he relapsed and died just five weeks shy of his 31st birthday.
Upon his death, the AGO hosted a memorial exhibition, while his peers organized a fundraiser for Reppen’s widow and children.
Today, the AGO, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Hart House Collection, the National Gallery of Canada and other galleries house Reppen’s canvases. Because he participated in the inaugural Toronto Outdoor Art Fair in 1961, organizers presented the Jack Reppen Memorial Award to a deserving participant in the years after his death, but eventually discontinued the prize.
Sair Raut from Arts Etobicoke told the Star, “There could be an opportunity to establish a similar award in Jack Reppen’s name,” at their agency, adding, “It’s an interesting possibility and one we would be open to exploring.”
