Private Collection, Quebec (acquired directly from the artist)
Sotheby's Canada, auction, Toronto, November 16, 1994, lot 42
Private Collection, Calgary
Marcel Barbeau played a major role in the post-war abstract art movements in Quebec, a significant and momentous era for the province. The painter was a signatory of Refus global, a 1948 artists' manifesto seen by many in Quebec as a precursor of the Quiet Revolution. Barbeau was considered one of the cross-disciplinary Montreal artists known as the Automatistes, though he remained fiercely independent in style. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Barbeau did not develop a signature style that was instantly recognizable. “Un homme et une femme” (1959) fits into the broad category of his post-Automatiste work of the late 1950s and early 1960s. These works frequently challenged the viewer with illusions of depth and figure, as evidenced in the raised white lines overlapping each other against a black ground in “Un homme et une femme”. These lines serve as heavily abstracted depictions of a male and female figure, as suggested in the painting’s title.
