Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Figurative and Abstract Art in Québec, 1940 - 1960

July 31, 2008—December 31, 2009

World War II hastened Alfred Pellan’s return to Québec, after painting in Paris for some fifteen years. His work, shown in 1940 in Québec City and Montréal, had a stimulating effect on artists who had long been trying to wake the art community to the avant-garde. In the postwar period, Québec artists spent more time in Europe. Like Pellan, they reinvented the vocabulary of figurative art influenced by the esthetics of Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and Primitivism.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, painters, sculptors, photographers, weavers, ceramists, graphic artists and interior designers and decorators explored new areas, extending the boundaries of figurative expression. A work’s power of evocation took precedence over portrayal.

The exhibition spotlights the main players in this great adventure: Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean Dallaire, Alfred Pellan, Marcelle Ferron, Fernand Leduc and many others.

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