Sold for: $11,250

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly form the artist by the present Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
Jacques Ferron, Rosaire, Petite collection Lanctôt, 2003, reproduced on the cover

Please note: A copy of the book Rosaire by the artist's brother Jacques Ferron (2003) accompanies this lot. The work is featured on the cover.

Marcelle Ferron was born in 1924 in Louiseville, Quebec. She studied to become a painter at the École des beaux-arts in Quebec City in the early 1940s, but withdrew from their program, as she considered it too academic and conformist. When she left Quebec City for Montreal, she frequented many galleries and museums in search of inspiration, and after seeing an exhibition of Paul-Émile Borduas’s paintings, she was struck by his works and felt the urgent need to meet with him. Their first encounter, in 1946, was life changing for the young artist. She was then introduced to a group of individuals who would later become members of the Automatist group: Pierre Gauvreau, Françoise Sullivan, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcel Barbeau and Jean Paul Riopelle.

Ferron’s link to the Automatists was made official in August 1948, when she became one of the 16 signatories of Borduas’s Refus global manifesto. This document signaled an important cultural shift in Quebec. Art historian Roald Nasgaard explains that it was “a passionate attack on all the repressive social, political, historical and religious forces that had shaped the Québécois people…” Not only was it the driving force behind the Automatist movement, it is now regarded as a milestone in the modernization of Quebec, exposing the province to the cosmopolitan ideas of the post-war era. At the young age of 24, Ferron was one of seven women artists to sign it. But the aftermath of the manifesto’s publication was challenging. Its author, Borduas, and its signatories found it almost impossible to show their works in “la belle province.” Borduas was fired from his teaching position at the École du meuble and had to move to New York, and eventually Paris. In 1953, Ferron also left for the “City of Light” with her three daughters, all aged under five; she stayed in Paris until 1966.

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