The artwork "Sans titre" from 1961 beautifully showcases Marcelle Ferron's renowned abstract expressionist style, which has made her a prominent figure in the art scenes of Quebec and France. Her talent and artistic vision are particularly celebrated in 2024, marking the one-hundredth anniversary of her birth. An active member of the avant-garde group "Les Automatistes", Ferron was a signatory to the 1948 "Refus global" (“Global Refusal”). This manifesto was a call to unfetter artistic and cultural expression in the province and the document of the tumultuous late 1940s cultural ferment in Quebec.
In Paris from 1953-1966, Ferron moved away from the Surrealist patterns central to "Les Automatistes" to develop immediately recognizable paintings such as "Sans titre". Grounded in her expressive facility with paint, Ferron’s strong gestures with the palette knife suggest the physical labour of the hand and arm and thus her full involvement in the painting. Dramatically yet without violence, forms tear into and across one another. We see this effect in the red, brown, and white form in the bottom centre. Her pigment is often thick, creating a topography of forms that we note especially in the corners of this canvas. If we add her propensity for high-keyed colour, as a whole "Sans titre" presents a collection of puzzle pieces in motion. We know and appreciate that they will not find stasis in a conventional picture but instead generate infinite transmutations before our eyes.
Ferron is also known for her public artworks. As well as imbibing international painterly techniques in Paris, she was inspired by French glass artist Michel Blum and brought his innovations back to Montreal. Ferron’s large and colourful stained glass installations were part of the International Trade Centre at Expo 67, for example, and can be enjoyed today in the Champ-de-Mars metro station in Montreal (installed in 1968). Different in medium and scale, there is nonetheless a bond between Ferron’s paintings and her public stained glass installations. Her abstract art is a way of life rather than a choice of style.
Mark A. Cheetham has written extensively on Canadian artists, including Jack Chambers, Alex Colville, Robert Houle, and Camille Turner, most recently in the collection "Unsettling Canadian Art History" (2022). He is a freelance writer and curator and a professor of Art History at the University of Toronto.
