The Plasticien movement was a Canadian non-figurative painting movement, which appeared around 1955 in Quebec. [1] It was a more orderly style of painting in reaction to Les Automatistes [2]
In 1954, a young critic and painter newly returned from Paris, Rodolphe de Repentigny, reviewed an exhibition of four young artists whom he called 'Les Plasticiens'. The name itself expressed their exclusive concern with the abstract properties of painting. They focused on colors, lines, contrast; completely rejecting the idea of Surrealism and their attachment to the idealism of the European Constructivist movement. He pointed out the difference of their approach from automatism. In his criticism he wrote:
Every painting must have its own particular form to make a totality, resistant to and not assimilated by an ambiance and where each part depends on the whole and vice-versa.
The movement was launched in 1955 by the Manifeste des plasticiens, written by de Repentigny (under the name Jauran) and signed by Louis Belzile, Jean-Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin. [2] In the manifesto they acknowledged a kind of debt to the Automatists, recognizing their place in the revolutions that had helped to free the arts from “servitude to a materialistic ritual”.
They also called on artists to follow the example of Piet Mondrian. [2] The Plasticiens sought to objectify paintings instead of paint objects. For example, Toupin shaped his own canvases into geometric shapes so that they would be objects of another kind. [3]
Guido Molinari created Plasticien works between 1959 and 1962. [4] Other artists associated with the movement are Claude Tousignant, Denis Juneau, Fernand Leduc and more distantly, George E. Russell.
Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artistic dissidents from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The movement was founded in the early 1940s by painter Paul-Émile Borduas. Les Automatistes were so called because they were influenced by Surrealism and its theory of automatism. Members included Marcel Barbeau, Roger Fauteux, Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Guy Borremans, Marcelle Ferron and Françoise Sullivan.
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.
Paul-Émile Borduas was a Québecois artist known for his abstract paintings. He was the leader of the avant-garde Automatiste movement and the chief author of the Refus Global manifesto of 1948. Borduas had a profound impact on the development of the arts and of thought, both in the province of Quebec and in Canada.
Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the Refus Global, the 1948 manifesto that announced the Quebecois artistic community's refusal of clericalism and provincialism. He is best known for his abstract painting style, in particular his "mosaic" works of the 1950s when he famously abandoned the paintbrush, using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas, giving his works a distinctive sculptural quality. He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morrice to attain widespread international recognition and high praise, both during his career and after his death. He was a leading artist of French Lyrical Abstraction.
Claude Tousignant is a Canadian artist. Tousignant is considered to be an important contributor to the development of geometric abstraction in Canada. He masterly used alternating values of complementary colours in innovative ways in his circle/target paintings.
Marcel Barbeau, was a Canadian painter, sculptor, graphic and performance artist who used different forms of abstraction and art techniques and technology to express himself.
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.
Pierre Gauvreau was a Québécois painter and writer who also worked in film and television production.
William Brymner, was a Canadian figure and landscape painter and educator. In addition to playing a key role in the development of Impressionism in Canada, Brymner taught numerous artists who became leading figures in Canadian modern art.
Canadian art refers to the visual as well as plastic arts originating from the geographical area of contemporary Canada. Art in Canada is marked by thousands of years of habitation by Indigenous peoples followed by waves of immigration which included artists of European origins and subsequently by artists with heritage from countries all around the world. The nature of Canadian art reflects these diverse origins, as artists have taken their traditions and adapted these influences to reflect the reality of their lives in Canada.
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.
Clarence Alphonse Gagnon, LL. D. was a French Canadian painter, draughtsman, engraver and illustrator. He is known for his landscape paintings of the Laurentians and the Charlevoix region of eastern Quebec.
Denis Juneau was a Canadian painter and a leading figure in the Canadian plasticien movement.
Albert Dumouchel was a Canadian printmaker, painter and teacher. A multi-talented individual, Dumouchel also was a photographer and gifted musician. His work as an artist ranged from abstract to figurative.
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.
Charles Gagnon was a multidisciplinary artist known for his painting, photography and film.
Roald Nasgaard is a champion of abstract art in Canada.
Louis Belzile was one of the main figures in 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.
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.