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DoBo by Ulysse Comtois

Artwork by Ulysse Comtois, DoBo

Ulysse Comtois
DoBo

oil on canvas
signed and dated 1961 lower right; signed, titled and dated on the reverse
16 x 14 ins ( 40.6 x 35.6 cms )

Auction Estimate: $7,000.00$5,000.00 - $7,000.00

Price Realized $5,428.00
Sale date: November 19th 2019

Provenance:
Isaacs Gallery, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
After briefly attending the École des beaux-arts de Montréal in the late 1940s, Ulysse Comtois abandoned his studies to mingle directly with the thriving Québec artistic milieu, drawn to the strong cultural statement of the Automatistes and their 1948 manifesto Le Refus Global. During the following decade, the artist was torn between the loose paint handling of the Automatistes and the emerging geometrical style of the new Plasticiens movement of Montreal. “DoBo” demonstrates this influence of the two opposing contemporaneous abstract approaches in Quebec, with thickly-applied layers of paint in varying textures that are neatly organized into horizontal bands. The painting serves as a rare example of Comtois’ oils during the early 1960s, as he was suddenly inspired to take up Dadaist- inspired metal sculpture in 1960-1961 for the remainder of the decade.

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Ulysse Comtois
(1931 - 1999)

HighlightsWatch Artist

Born at Granby, Quebec, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal and exhibited first in that city about 1954.A member of the Non-Figurative Artists’ Association of Montreal, he has exhibited at the Denyse Delrue Gallery, and jointly with Rita Letendre at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Norton Gallery), and elsewhere. He has worked at commercial art, free lance photography, painting and sculpting. His paintings have appeared in the Third and Fourth Biennials of Canadian Art.

Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977