Waddington & Gorce, Toronto
Private Collection, Montreal
As early as 1957, at age seventeen, Jacques Hurtubise exhibited his work at the Salon du printemps in Montreal. He attended the École des beaux-arts de Montréal until 1960, when a grant enabled the young painter to spend nine months in New York. There, he became enamoured with the art of the Abstract Expressionists. Hurtubise was particularly drawn to the ‘Action Painting’ of De Kooning and Pollock, for their spontaneous and lively paint application. Hurtubise’s early energy-filled works, including “Rencontre”, reflect a combination of his personal experience and the forces of nature. Completed in 1963-64, the mixed media painting shows the emergence of the artist’s signature lightning bolt motif, executed in a spontaneous, gestural application inspired by the Automatistes and the Abstract Expressionists. Hurtubise divided his time between Montreal and New York for much of the 1960s, as he developed his unique style and experimented with hard-edge designs and repeated motifs combined with controlled “splashes” of pigment.
