Sold for: $49,250

PROVENANCE
Estate of the Artist
Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
Philip Fry, Charles Gagnon, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1978, page 71, reproduced page 140

EXHIBITED
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Charles Gagnon, traveling to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Vancouver Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1978 - 1980, catalogue #22

Charles Gagnon’s Burst from 1961 encapsulates the strength and enduring significance of his oeuvre. Introduced into the work by a collaged element, the title, as described by Philip Fry, “suggests the passage from contained to the released, from fullness to emptiness, from inside to outside.” With its charcoal grey ovoid shape, overlapping touches of soft pink and chartreuse green splashes, Burst is emblematic of Gagnon’s work in the early 1960s, when he returned to Montreal from New York after studying at the Parsons School of Design and the New York School of Interior Design. This exhilarating period is felt in the artist’s painterly energy—he covers the surface of the piece with a variety of brushwork, while deftly handling pictorial space. The composition is carefully constructed, yet never contrived. Gagnon produced few works in each decade, but his painting was a purposeful act—nothing was left to chance—resulting in an extremely coherent and powerful oeuvre. Burst was included in Gagnon’s retrospective held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1978, which traveled across Canada the following year.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars