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Pierre Gauvreau, L'oeil du cyclope condamné (Eye of the doomed cyclops) (2004), mixed media on canvas [Baron Gallery, Vancouver BC, Sep 28-Spring 2012] ©Carreau/Gauvreau/Sodrac
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Pierre Gauvreau, Sanctuaire non designé (2003), mixed media on canvas [Baron Gallery, Vancouver BC, Sep 28-Spring 2012] ©Carreau/Gauvreau/Sodrac
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Art = Libération features paintings by recently deceased Quebec artist Pierre Gauvreau (1922-2011) and his third wife Janine Carreau, a painter, photographer and Gauvreau’s agent in recent years. The exhibit was curated by Ray Ellenwood, a historian and writer whose books on the Automatists in Quebec include Egregore: A History of the Montréal Automatist Movement.
Pierre Gauvreau worked in an Automatist style first popularized by Surrealists as an inspirational game. The idea was to produce a state of creativity not limited by consciousness. During the 1940s in Quebec, a circle of young artists from various disciplines gravitated around the Automatist painter, Paul-Émile Borduas. In 1948 they published Refus global, a document widely recognized as a crucial expression of Quebec modernism.
Gauvreau was foremost a painter whose gestural brushwork was always prominent, even in colour-field paintings or hard-edged abstracts with their large areas of bright colour and geometric shapes. He exhibited extensively, including solo exhibitions at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (1979) and Musée du Québec (1981).
After major bypass surgery in 1995, Gauvreau turned to mixed media and the extensive use of acrylic sprayed over various stencils including lace doilies. Sprayed and painted in layers, many of these paintings combine loose contour lines surrounding patterned areas. The 47 brightly coloured pieces in the exhibit have been described as “exuberant” and a “celebration of life and of freedom from the strict cleric culture of mid-century Quebec.”
www.barongallery.ca
