Jean-Paul Riopelle, Untitled, 1958, oil on canvas. Gift of Ayala and Samuel Zacks, 1962 (05-071, cover image). Credit: Victor Sakuta, 1967
Exhibitions
Art-making / Québec 1940 - 1975
Historical Feature Gallery
16 April - 27 August 2006
In the 1940s, a small group of rebellious young artists in Montréal provided a passionate and intellectual bridgehead for modernism in the fields of the visual arts, literature, theatre and dance. For a few years, they gathered in the orbit of artist/teacher Paul-Émile Borduas and were influenced by European surrealism. Known as the Automatistes, they signed a manifesto, Le Refus global, in 1948, before gradually dispersing to pursue individual goals.
The creative intensity of their activities broke with long-held traditions of thought in Québec and subsequently inspired new movements and credos. Having assailed the traditions of Québec art, the Automatistes, in their turn, were confronted by rebellious younger artists, among them the Plasticiens, with their own manifesto, L'Authorité, and intellectual arguments sped on to seek meaning in new definitions of art. In painting, as the international centre of cultural influence swung from Paris to New York, the abstract gesture and spatial constructs of 1940s and 1950s Automatisme gave way to pure colour on a flat surface with 1960s and 1970s hard-edged and colour-field painting.
The period was one of magnificent intellectual and creative achievement and some of the greatest names in Canadian painting - Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Guido Molinari among them - glowed in the crucible of these years. Art-making / Québec will present a selection of works by these artists and others.
On Thursday 4 May at 12:15 pm, Associate Director and Curator Dorothy Farr will give a talk in the exhibition as part of Art Matters, a series of gallery talks, offered by staff and special guests, featured monthly from September to May. Admission is free for all on Thursdays.
Dorothy Farr
The exhibition is funded with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.