AANFM AUTO CAS QMG RCA SAAVQ SAPQ
1924 - 2001
Canadian
Sans titre
oil on board, circa 1959
on verso signed, numbered 88 on a label and stamped with the Succession Marcelle Ferron stamp
18 1/4 x 28 in, 46.4 x 71.1 cm
Estimate: $50,000 - $70,000 CAD
Sold for: $121,250
Preview at: Heffel Toronto – 13 Hazelton Ave
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto
LITERATURE
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007, page 83
Robert Enright, “The Art of Structuring Intimacy,” Marcelle Ferron: Monograph, 2008, page 12
Marcelle Ferron was born in 1924 in Louiseville, Quebec. She studied to become a painter at the École des beaux-arts in Quebec City in the early 1940s, but withdrew from their program, as she considered it too academic and conformist. When she left Quebec City for Montreal, she frequented many galleries and museums in search of inspiration, and after seeing an exhibition of Paul-Émile Borduas’s paintings, she was struck by his works and felt the urgent need to meet with him. Their first encounter, in 1946, was life changing for the young artist. She was then introduced to a group of individuals who would later become members of the Automatist group: Pierre Gauvreau, Françoise Sullivan, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcel Barbeau and Jean Paul Riopelle.
Ferron’s link to the Automatists was made official in August 1948, when she became one of the 16 signatories of Borduas’s Refus global manifesto. This document signaled an important cultural shift in Quebec. Art historian Roald Nasgaard explains that it was “a passionate attack on all the repressive social, political, historical and religious forces that had shaped the Québécois people…” Not only was it the driving force behind the Automatist movement, it is now regarded as a milestone in the modernization of Quebec, exposing the province to the cosmopolitan ideas of the post-war era. At the young age of 24, Ferron was one of seven women artists to sign it. But the aftermath of the manifesto’s publication was challenging. Its author, Borduas, and its signatories found it almost impossible to show their works in “la belle province.” Borduas was fired from his teaching position at the École du meuble and had to move to New York, and eventually Paris. In 1953, Ferron also left for the “City of Light” with her three daughters, all aged under five; she stayed in Paris until 1966.
During her Parisian period, her canvases became larger and her palette more colourful. She applied her paints with broader strokes of the spatula, with a renewed focus on gesture and rhythm. Art critic Robert Enright wrote:
She never dripped paint in the manner of Pollock or Riopelle; her pigment is not released as much as it is set down. There are no spatters and rag smears mixed in with the brushwork on Ferron’s surface. Before long, she reached the point where she used a palette knife the way a mason employs a trowel. She lays it on.
Sans titre is typical of her production dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Here, Ferron covers the entire surface of the canvas with an incredibly coherent and rich selection of colours. Intense blues – ranging from ultramarine to light turquoise – along with saturated touches of amethyst, maroon, crimson, orange and brown are counterbalanced with luminous whites, making our eyes dance all over the work. These colours are layered in sharp, overlapping strokes with her trusty palette knife - laid down in thick swoops, her impasto reveals the grainy texture of the paint that she mixed herself from pure pigments. Enright wrote: “Ferron layers coloured shapes one on top of the other, but the effect is less the creation of tissues of transparency than laying down a foundation, as if the shapes were about to shift themselves into some pre-determined form. The use of marks to make forms and forms to create structure is Marcelle Ferron’s painterly signature.”
Executed around 1959, Sans titre is from Ferron’s best and most coveted period and showcases one of her finest selections of colours.
Estimate: $50,000 - $70,000 CAD
All prices are in Canadian Dollars
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