PROVENANCE
Otto Bengle, Montreal
Private Collection, Toronto
Private Collection, Nova Scotia

LITERATURE
Marcelle Ferron de 1945 à 1970, Musée d’art contemporain, 1970, reproduced and listed, unpaginated
Réal Lussier, Marcelle Ferron, Musée d’art contemporain, 2000, pages 22 – 23

EXHIBITED
Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal, Marcelle Ferron de 1945 à 1970, April 8 – May 31, 1970, catalogue #36

In 1953, in the midst of the dissolution of les Automatistes—the influential abstractionist movement spearheaded by Paul-Émile Borduas that prioritized expressive, automatic painting—Marcelle Ferron traded her native Montreal for Paris, where she would remain for the next 13 years. While Ferron was an important and impactful voice in the development of Québécois non-objective painting, the move would prove to be a crucial turning point in her production, and the works she produced during her time in the French capital would become some of her most revolutionary and celebrated.

Paris brought with it several important influences that were not available to the young painter in Montreal. Foremost was a sense of cosmopolitan artistic exchange: through the 1950s the city was at the centre of the European avant-garde and hosted other abstractionists experimenting along the same lines as Ferron. These included, most notably, the American Abstract Expressionist painters Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, whom Ferron would show alongside, as well as fellow Montrealer Jean Paul Riopelle.

More materially, access to more expensive, vibrant pigments as well as the pressure of a European market that demanded more chromatic, lyrical painting encouraged Ferron to produce canvases that were ever more expansive and colourful. A major Canada Council grant in 1957 further enabled access to larger canvases and more complex painting tools: Ferron had long discarded paintbrushes in favour of palette knives and spatulas, preferring to “rake” paint across the canvas in broad gestural strokes; she had huge, metre-long blades manufactured to maximize the effect of her energetic movements.

The paintings that resulted from this confluence of factors are dramatic. While the works Ferron produced during the Automatiste period were typically crowded, tightly composed tessellations, characterized by earthy tones and deep shadows, the paintings she produced during her time in Paris were suddenly breaking out across the canvas in loose, exuberant flashes of colour and luminous whites, rendered in expressive sweeps and gestures.

Candelle is a fantastic example of the tumultuous and dynamic works that emerged from this period. The work is dominated by two central, roughly vertical masses of colour, balancing with each other across the canvas. They are a dazzling flurry of pure and brilliant colours dragged through white: blue dominates the upper areas, while deep burgundy reds, mustard yellows and emerald greens flit and clash through the impasto. The twin structures are unified by bands of black, which provide a distinct sense of shadow and volume.

Here, as with many of Ferron’s canvases, perhaps the most interesting effect is the use of very pure white. Anchoring the background, it functions as a structural framework for the masses of colour, establishing a palpable figure / ground relationship. This relationship is complicated and made indistinct, however, as white becomes a crucial part of the colour that has been dragged through it, inconclusively mixed and layered with the more chromatic pigments—creating an oscillating tension between empty space and dense, shimmering mosaics. This use of a black-white dynamic perhaps recalls the earlier utilization of those oppositional tones by Ferron’s mentor Borduas. However, in its jewel-like palette and monumental construction, Candelle is an exuberant, vital display of Ferron at her most accomplished.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars