Claude Tousignant

Last updated
Claude Tousignant
Born (1932-12-23) December 23, 1932 (age 91)
EducationSchool of Art and Design at the MBAM
Known for Painter, Sculptor
Notable work"Chromatic accelerator" series
Movement Plasticiens, Tachism
AwardsOfficer of the Order of Canada
Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts

Claude Tousignant OC RCA (born December 23, 1932, in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian artist. [1] Tousignant is considered to be an important contributor to the development of geometric abstraction in Canada. [2] [3] [4] He masterly used alternating values of complementary colours in innovative ways in his circle/target paintings.

Contents

Biography

Claude Tousignant was born in Montreal, Quebec. [1] From 1948 to 1951, he attended the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where he studied under Arthur Lismer, Louis Archambault, Marian Dale Scott, Jacques de Tonnancour and Gordon Webber. [5] He then travelled to Paris where he studied at the Académie Ranson, returning to Montreal in the spring of 1952. [5]

Artistic career

Modulateur de lumiere, 2005, installation at Art Mur Claude Tousignant.jpg
Modulateur de lumière, 2005, installation at Art Mûr

Tousignant is considered a member of the second generation of the modern art movement in Montreal called "les Plasticiens". [6] [2] This group of four painters (Jean-Paul Jérôme, Louis Belzile, Rodolphe de Repentigny (Jauran) and Fernand Toupin) felt painting should be pure form and colour; meaning and spontaneous expression were to be avoided. [7] In 1962, Tousignant introduced the form of the circle, which would become his signature motif, into his geometric paintings. [8]

Awards

Museum collections

Related Research Articles

Jean-Paul Mousseau was a Quebec artist. He was a student of Paul-Émile Borduas, a member of the Automatist group and a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fernand Leduc</span> Canadian artist (1916–2014)

Fernand Leduc was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter and a major figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene in the 1940s and 1950s. During his 50-year career, Leduc participated in many expositions in Canada and France. He was born in Viauville, Montreal, Quebec.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serge Lemoyne</span>

Serge Lemoyne was a Canadian artist from Quebec. He worked as a performance artist as well as creating paintings, assemblages and prints. Lemoyne explored themes such as the environment, technology, and social justice. Lemoyne's work was exhibited in Canada and internationally, and he received numerous awards throughout his career. He died in 1998 at the age of 57.

David Blatherwick (born 1960) is a Canadian artist and educator.

Fernand Toupin was a Québécois abstract painter best known as a first-generation member of the avant-garde movement known as Les Plasticiens. Like other members of the group, his shaped paintings drew upon the tradition of geometric abstraction, and he cited Mondrian as a forerunner. In 1959, Toupin began working with a more lyrical, though abstract, way of painting. The last decade of his career saw his return to geometric abstraction. Like Jean-Paul Mousseau, Toupin created works which lay outside the standard boundaries of art such as his stage sets for ballets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michel de Broin</span> Canadian sculptor (born 1970)

Michel de Broin is a Canadian sculptor. De Broin has created numerous public artworks in Canada and Europe, including the Salvador Allende monument in Montreal. He was the recipient of the 2007 Sobey Art Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Letendre</span> Canadian artist (1928–2021)

Rita Letendre, LL. D. was a Canadian painter, muralist, and printmaker associated with Les Automatistes and the Plasticiens. She was an Officer of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Governor General's Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Dallaire</span> Canadian painter (1916-1965)

Jean-Philippe Dallaire was one of the leading artists working figuratively in the 1960s in Canada. He is known for his festive scenes peopled by macabre characters.

Nancy Petry is a Canadian artist known for innovation within the field of painting, photography, film and performance art. As one of the first Canadian artists to paint in the style of lyrical abstraction, her work was featured at the Commonwealth Institute, at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and in a National Gallery of Canada touring exhibition. She was also instrumental in establishing the Association des graveurs du Québec and contributed to the success of the Montreal alternative art cooperative, Véhicule Art. In 2015 the "Nancy Petry Award" was instituted.

Peter Krausz is a Romanian-born Canadian artist. Throughout his career, he worked within the fields of painting, drawing, installation, and photography and, since 1970, exhibited in museums and galleries across Canada, the United States, and Europe. He is best known for large-scale landscape paintings of the Mediterranean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Beaugrand-Champagne</span> Canadian documentary photographer

Claire Beaugrand-Champagne is a Canadian documentary photographer. She is known for her socially engaged work and, having started her career in 1970, is considered the first female press photographer in Quebec. She was a member of the Groupe d'action photographique (GAP) alongside Michel Campeau, Gabor Szilasi, Roger Charbonneau et Pierre Gaudard

Milly Ristvedt, also known as Milly Ristvedt-Handerek, is a Canadian abstract painter. Ristvedt lives and paints in Ontario, where she is represented by the Oeno Gallery. A monograph covering a ten-year retrospective of her work, Milly Ristvedt-Handerek: Paintings of a Decade, was published by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 1979. In 2017, a second monograph was published by Oeno Gallery which included a survey of paintings from 1964 through to 2016, Milly Ristvedt, Colour and Meaning : an incomplete palette.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Rivard-Lemoyne</span>

Suzanne Rivard-Lemoyne was an artist born in Quebec City, Quebec who later moved to Ottawa, Ontario and is known for her significant contribution to arts administration. She was responsible for developing Art Bank, the Canada Council's art collection program in 1972. Rivard-Lemoyne became a Visual Arts Officer for the Canada Council in 1970 and started the art collection and leasing system for government offices, offering regional artists support and those interested in collecting access to local art. She played a major role in supporting and developing the local community of artist-run centres and contemporary art galleries. Rivard-Lemoyne won the 2003 Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts for Outstanding Contribution in arts support.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesús Carles de Vilallonga</span>

Jesús Carles de Vilallonga i Rosell was a Spanish/Canadian figurative artist who worked primarily in the medium of egg tempera. He is best known for his richly textured paintings in an intricate, highly colored style that is not easy even though everything is readily intelligible: male and females characters, beasts, forests, architectural structures and artifacts. Vilallonga's iconography draws from a broad and complex painting tradition ranging from Romanesque art, the Renaissance, and Surrealism, while maintaining his own contemporary style. His work is sometimes related to Symbolism and his production is always enhanced by the contributions of abstraction. He works with the "inner eye" which Freud described as the most profound and the most intelligent, in a sojourn through nature and man's hidden interior.

Louise Robert is a Canadian painter who uses writing in her work.

Francine Savard is a Canadian artist whose paintings and installations are grounded in the Plasticien tradition. Her practice explores relationships between language and visual art. Besides painting, Savard has a career as a graphic designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Belzile</span> Canadian artist (1929-2019)

Louis Belzile was one of the main figures of geometric abstraction in painting in Quebec and one of the members of the Plasticiens group in Montreal along with Rodolphe de Repentigny (Jauran), Jean-Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin.

Roland Poulin is a Canadian contemporary sculptor whose work is characterized by its horizontality and weightiness. He has lived in Sainte-Angèle-de-Monnoir, Quebec, since 1986.

Jean-Paul Jérôme was a painter, designer and sculptor, who was a co-founder of Les Plasticiens in 1955. He was a key figure in Quebec's abstract art scene of the second half of the 20th century.

Rodolphe de Repentigny was a painter, art and literary critic for the newspaper La Presse in Montreal (1952-1959), theorist, photographer and mountaineer. He was a key member of Les Plasticiens and was the writer of the Manifeste des plasticiens. He painted under the pseudonym Jauran.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Claude Tousignant". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
  2. 1 2 "Monochrome Crimson, 1981". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  3. Canadian Art. Society for Art Publications. 1964.
  4. Joan Murray (1 November 1999). Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century. Dundurn. pp. 99–. ISBN   978-1-55488-120-8.
  5. 1 2 "Claude Tousignant (1932- ) Chronologie" (in French). Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Archived from the original on 13 October 2013. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
  6. Kristina Huneault; Janice Anderson (11 April 2012). Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970. MQUP. pp. 264–. ISBN   978-0-7735-8683-3.
  7. Reid, Dennis (1973). A Concise History of Canadian Painting . Toronto: Oxford University Press. p.  294. ISBN   0195402065. Diametrically opposed to the spontaneous expression of the unconsciousreplete with associative meaningas was earlier sought by the Automatistes, the Plasticiens hoped to achieve a precise uncomplicated response to the painted object.
  8. "note biographique". Perspectives sur Claude Tousignant. Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  9. "Eight remarkable Canadians win Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts from the Canada Council for the Arts". Canada Council. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  10. "CLaude Tousignant". Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  11. 1 2 "Claude Tousignant". Itinerary in Contemporary Art. Archived from the original on 9 August 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  12. "Prizes". Canada Council. Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  13. "PRIZE CANADIAN INSTITUTE ROME [1 fiche]". Termium Plus. Government of Canada. 8 October 2009. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  14. James D. Campbell (1995). After Geometry: The Abstract Art of Claude Tousignant. ECW Press. ISBN   978-1-55022-245-6.
  15. Creative Canada: A Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-century Creative and Performing Artists . Published. 1972. ISBN   978-0-8020-0196-2.
  16. Artistes Canadiens: Expositions. Roundstone Council for the Arts. 1973. ISBN   978-0-919656-00-0.
  17. "Members since 1880". Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2013.
  18. Roger Matuz (1997). Contemporary Canadian artists. Gale Canada. ISBN   978-1-896413-46-4.
  19. "Claude Tousignant". Artotheque. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  20. "The Transformative Power of Art". Art Gallery of Onatario. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  21. "Claude Tousignant". Art Bank. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  22. "About the Collection". Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
  23. Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec; Pierre B. Landry (2009). 75 ans chrono: le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 1933-2008. Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. ISBN   978-2-551-23759-3.
  24. "Playing Around With a Gong". td.com. Retrieved 24 June 2016.