Untitled, 1955

Private Collection, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

Espace 55 Exhibition - Showing 11 Montreal Painters, Musée des beaux- arts de Montréal, Montreal, February 11-28, 1955 Paterson Ewen Retrospective, London Regional Art Gallery, London, November 5-29, 1976, no.8

Gilles Corbeil, Espace 55 Exhibition - Showing 11 Montreal Painters (Exhibition Catalogue), Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Montreal, 1955, unpaginated, listed as no. 3, reproduced “Peinture 1955”, L’autorité, February 26, 1955, reproduced page 6 (image inverted) Matthew Teitelbaum, Paterson Ewen, The Montreal Years, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 1987, reproduced page 19 Heather A. Fraser, “Paterson Ewen: The Turn from Non-Figurative to Figurative Painting”, The Journal of Canadian Art History, Volume 13, No. 1, 1990, reproduced page 29

A Montreal native, Paterson Ewen attended classes at the School of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1948-50, studying under William Goodridge Roberts and Arthur Lismer, among others. As a student he was also influenced by European Post-Impressionist artists, which is apparent in the fractured surfaces of his landscapes, still lifes and portraits. Ewen’s painterly approach shifted upon encountering Francoise Sullivan, an automatist dancer, whom he would marry in December 1949. He was introduced to automatism through Sullivan’s writings, as well as her enduring friendships with Quebec abstract painters of the group ‘les automatistes’ Jean-Paul Mousseau and Pierre Gauvreau. Ewen’s entry into the largely francophone art scene through his wife came at a moment when the Automatistes were separating and disagreeing over intellectual positions. Yet these artists took a liking to Ewen and encouraged his early 1950s figurative paintings which demonstrated a breakdown of subject matter. Nevertheless, they of course rejected any representational imagery, believing that “abstraction offered the truest release from the constraints of order.” Ewen’s first entirely non-representational painting was completed in late 1954. His early abstract work brought him immediate attention. Gilles Corbeil, a Montreal artist and art dealer, included five of Ewen’s recent works in a Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition of contemporary abstract art in February 1955. The purpose of the show was to highlight “a new order... a spatial reality” which linked Surrealism and Automatism. “Untitled (1955)” was included in this exhibition. Author Matthew Teitelbaum comments on this painting in particular, describing it as “constructed around a dominant grid- like calligraphy, and yet the compositions were open, centralized, and organized by concentric thrust.” He goes on to explain how these works by Ewen occupied an experimental and distinct middle ground, different from the other artists in the exhibition. Teitelbaum writes: “Where the Automatiste influence encouraged blended color harmonies induced equally by the palette knife and the dripping of paint, Ewen maintained discreet colour; where [Fernand] Leduc flattened his composition by working the painting surface equally - and filling the corners with incidents - Ewen maintained a strongly centralized image.”