Calcul lunaire, 1957

Joyner Waddington’s, auction, Toronto, June 3, 2003, Lot 79 Galerie Valentin, Montreal Private Collection, Toronto

Jean-Philippe Dallaire was born to a large family in Hull, Quebec in 1916. He studied at the Central Technical School in Toronto from 1932-1935, at the École des Beaux-Arts, Montreal and then at the Ateliers d’Art Sacré, Paris in 1938. While in France, young Dallaire encountered the works of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Joan Miró all of whom strongly influenced his art practice. After the war, he returned to Canada, working as an art teacher, cartoonist, and self-employed artist and muralist. He both drew and painted, and made use of cardboard, canvas board, linen or cotton canvas, chipboard and plywood in his work. Dallaire is noted for his self-education and originality. His style was constantly evolving and being reinvented, and Dallaire incorporated his many interests into his work, including the theatre, puppetry, and fantastical creatures. “One could say that I do not take life seriously. I always had a fondness for birds, little flags and the texture of fabrics. Perhaps it is a bit decorative, but so what”, Dallaire is quoted as saying in 1957, which speaks to this wide range of influences as well as his indifference to artistic trends. “Calcul lunaire” was also painted in 1957, at the height of the artist’s career. The large canvas presents blue abstract forms both linear and planar, floating across an ochre ground. These shapes appear to be in movement, yet it is unclear if they are meant to represent human or animal life or another organism. Due to the work’s title, translating to “Lunar Calculation”, it is possible that the circular form in the upper right quadrant is intended to represent a moon. This lively abstract canvas bears similarities to Miró’s paintings of animated biomorphic forms, as well as to the early Surrealists’ themes of dream imagery and drawing from the unconscious.