Arcane sonore, 1978

Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, Quebec

“Tendances actuelles au Quebec”, Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, 1978

Roald Nasgaard and Michel Martin, “The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montreal 1955-1970”, Markham, 2013, pages 151-52 Charles Bourget, “Jean-Paul Jérôme: Les vibrations modernes | The Modernist Vibrations”, Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup, 2001, pages 11 and 23

Jérôme was a Montreal-born painter and cofounder of the Plasticiens in 1955. He was a teacher for the Montreal School of Fine Arts upon returning from a two-year stint in Paris, but began painting full time in 1973. In his later years, Jérôme commented on his oeuvre: “I have been attracted all my life to perfect shapes, to colourful overtones.” He received numerous honours, exhibitions and retrospectives for his work as an independent artist and as a member of the Plasticiens. The Plasticiens came together as a group under a common approach to pictorial processes and their attitude toward painting and society. They were committed to the tone, texture, forms, lines and, their unity. Jerome was one of the four founding members listed in the original “Manifeste des Plasticiens”, dated le 10 février 1955. Automatistes such as Paul-Émile Borduas were highly influential for the Plasticiens and their contemporaries, not just as non-figurative painters, but also in their aims to push the boundaries beyond the viewer's comfort zone. The Plasticiens manifesto said: “There is no sacred art in 1955: art is sacred.” “Arcane Sonore” exemplifies the purity of formal elements, immediacy, and individuality that characterizes artwork produced by the Plasticiens.