Eclypse, 1957

Galerie Denise Delrue, Montreal Private Collection, Quebec

Lise Gauvin, “Entretiens avec Fernand Leduc, suivis de Conversation avec Thérèse Renaud”, Montreal, 1995, page 23

Fernand Leduc was an active influence and participant in the development of abstract art in Quebec. Not only a signatory of the 1948 Refus global, the artist was also responsible for making contact with the French writer André Breton in New York in order to make European surrealists more aware of the contribution of the Montréal Automatistes. After spending six years in Paris, in 1953 Leduc returned to Montreal with the feeling that the gestural automatiste painting was reaching an impasse. The artist steadily moved to a type of hard-edge abstraction by 1955, his works gradually acquiring rich colour contrasts. In the same year, Leduc came to the defense of these avant-garde and thus controversial Plasticien-related theories during the exhibition “Espace 55”. Reactions to the show provoked a debate between himself and Paul-Émile Borduas, who disapproved of the new directions taken by Montréal painting. By 1956 he had become the president-founder of the Non-Figurative Artists’ Association of Montréal. He experimented at that time with various forms of spontaneous and gestural nonfigurative painting, his works gradually becoming more involved with interactions and contrast of colours. “Eclypse” was painted in 1957, during this period of experimentation and public recognition for Fernand Leduc. An arrangement of abstract forms in a palette of blues, the large canvas demonstrates the artist’s leanings to the approach of the Plasticiens. The interlocking two- dimensional forms have the appearance of a large jigsaw puzzle, as they are all on the same plane, with no overlap. Some outlines are rounded, though they still have pointed corners, creating a composition that has a hard-edge yet organic feel. The bold canvas highlights Leduc’s ability to consistently revitalize the genre of abstract art throughout his prolific career. The period from 1955-1970 is recognized as an evolutionary time for Leduc's artistic process, as he was developing his unique style that straddled gestural and hard-edge painting. On his practice, Leduc recounted, “I do not close my eyes, I am here, I am present, I am a human being who reacts. I am moreover a painter; I have the eyes of a painter: I organize.” The artist has a keen awareness of his surroundings and an extreme presence in the moment. To Leduc, painting is the lens through which he observes the world. He sought to channel this direct approach and emphasize it to the viewer through his use of dynamic colour, saying: “It is most important to reach the highest level of intensity with the simplest means. I'm looking for the most intense colour so as to trigger the densest response and attain the strongest dynamism possible.” Leduc returned to France in 1959, as he continued to evolve his abstract style. By the mid-1960s Leduc had relaxed his hard-edge geometric compositions in favour of more curvaceous forms. “Eclypse” appears to foreshadow this shift to softer, rounded forms in the following years. He lived in Paris until 1970, when he came back for two years to teach at Université Laval and the Université du Québec in Montreal. The artist then returned to Europe until settling back in Montreal in 2006.