Marcel Barbeau


Marcel Barbeau, was a Canadian artist.
Marcel Barbeau is firstly an abstract expressionist and an action painting artist, whose paintings and sculptures become the material continuation of instinctual movement, which he superposes until formal achievement is reached. He’s thus pioneer of new pictural approaches, such as all over image, the cropping of composition by means of cutting a larger work or the association of several gestural techniques: scraping, marks, spots, drippings... His kinetic works as well suggest the expression of movement, until it becomes incantatory hallucination. While adopting a minimalist approach in his quest for purity, he rejects its theoretical and formal constraints, to which he never totally submits. Let it be in his paintings, drawings or sculptures, his most simple compositions or most stripped forms – from the abstract figures that inhabits them – suggest movement, time passing by, a future to come. In that regard, his art constantly stands on the fringe of the aesthetic movements to which he relates to, imposing to the latter his own questionings, his own singular approach.
All of his work translates, in its own mutations, a will to simultaneously grasp the present and forecast the future, reflecting the thought typical of his era. As a witness of his time, he broadens his art with new visions inspired from science and new technologies. His interest in psychoanalysis leads him to make use of the unconscious in his Automatist gestural works. From his observations using electronic optical instruments, he wanted to express the infinitesimal and the infinitely big in his Taschist paintings. In New York, he refines his kinetic studies by meeting with researchers working at Bell Laboratory.
As a painter and sculptor, Barbeau has addressed most of the fields in visual arts. As a multidisciplinary artist, he tried to change the plastic language by transgressing disciplinary boundaries. His collages became paintings, art prints and sculptures. His drawings of poems, made of words and letters, have sometimes borrowed their medium and relief from painting. His sculptures remind of drawings thrown in space or look like small shelters, almost architectural. His performances, real stagings of the act of creation, materialized through paintings, drawings and, under his directive with the complicity of photographers or film directors, through photographs, films and videos, giving some permanence to otherwise ephemeral artistic gestures.
Curiosity leads Barbeau to study the main contemporary artistic trends originating from other disciplinary fields. His interest for those art forms encourage him to draw on their problematics, structures or writing processes in order to find some convergences, connivances, anchor points or to confirm aesthetic intuitions. He thus uses poetry, music, dance and architecture to renew his art, but not as subjects nor models. For example, his phonic calligraphies inspired from his friend Claude Gauvreau’s poetry, his drawings inspired from Grupen by Stockhausen or his interdisciplinary events from the seventies and the eighties. He even created works that fall under these disciplines: his phonic chants from the mid-eighties, which appear in the portrait film by Manon Barbeau entitled Barbeau, Libre comme l’art; his dances-action paintings from the seventies; the choreography he created for the opening dance part of his exhibit at Domaine Cataraqui.
Despite its diversity and its profusion, his work reveals a profound unity in its writing, which materializes in his preference for diagonal axes, for compositions showing fragile equilibrium and in his spatiotemporal approach to the visual world. Barbeau thus expresses his fascination for movement as a bearer of desire and of time measure. He also stands out for the symbolic dimension and irony that translate from the title of his purest abstractions. As a "baroque" artist, his work falls within a fusional approach to artistic creation, while revealing his search for formal perfection and plastic equilibrium. Economy of means and aesthetic perfection being of great concern for him, Barbeau still needs to express emotions in an elated way and refers to the unconscious, even in his paintings, let them be optical, geometrical, minimalist or serial. Thus, his work reveals itself as a permanent and utopian quest in reaching the synthesis of opposites.

Honors & Grants

1962 Canada Council Grant
1964 Zack Award, Canadian Painting Biennial, Canadian Royal Academy
1965 Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs Grant
1969 Canada Council short term Grant
1971 Canada Council Grant
1973 Lynch-Staunton Fellowship, Canada Council
1986 Sculpture Prize, Mc Donald Restaurant's Canada Art, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
1988 Mention, International Art Competition, New York
1988 Mention Horizon International Art Competition
1989 Guest of honor at the Quebec Painting Council fundraising evening, Montreal Museum of Fine arts.
Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs Grant
1989 Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs Grant for promotion,
1990 Guest of honor at Symposium de la jeune peinture de Baie Saint-Paul.
1991Quebec Ministry of Cultural Affairs Grant for promotion,.
1993 Réception at the Canadian Royal Academy of Arts
1994 short term Grant to produce works to represent Quebec at the Quebec
1994 Gold Medal: painting, second Jeux de la Francophonie
1995Canada Order as an Officer.
1998 Publication of a stamp by Canada Post as a part of the collection on the Automatists painters signatory of the manifesto Refus global.
1999 Condorcet Honorary Prize to the Signatories of the manifesto, Montreal. Mouvement laïque du Québec
2001 Fifth prize in painting at the Art Biennale Internationale Del Arte Contemporaneo, Fortezza da Basso, Florence, Italy.
2002 Invited to join Académie Européenne des Arts et des Lettres, France.
Official disclosure of a memorial late on his former studio and residence in Montreal located at 1637 Amherst Street
2002 Reception at the European Academy of Arts and Letters, France
2013 Governor General's Awards, visual art, Canada, https://web.archive.org/web/20140910074513/http://canadacouncil.ca/en/council/resources/videos/gg-awards-in-visual-and-media-arts-2013/marcel-barbeau
2013 Louis-Philippe-Hébert Award, Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, May 2013, Québec, http://ssjb.com/societe-saint-jean-baptiste-de-montreal-avis-aux-medias-remise-du-prix-louis-philippe-hebert-de-la-ssjb-pour-les-beaux-arts/
2013 Paul-Émile-Borduas Award, prix du Québec, octobre 2013, Québec, http://www.prixduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/recherche/desclaureat.php?noLaureat=465
2015 Ordre national of Québec, June 2015, Québec

Public Collections

Acadian Art Museum, University of Moncton, New Brunswick
Agence de coopération culturelle et technique de la Francophonie, Paris, France
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
Archives of the art criticism, Rennes, France
Archives de l’UQAM - Fonds Marcel Barbeau, Montreal, QC
Archives nationale du Québec- Archives de l’audio visuel, Quebec City, QC
Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON
Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, ON
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON
Art Gallery of Peterborough, Peterborough, ON
Artothèque de Montréal, Montreal, QC
Art Bank, Canada Art Council, Ottawa, ON
Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet, Paris, France
Bibliothèque de Montreal, Montreal, QC
Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, France
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, Montreal, QC
British Museum, London, U.K.
Canada Art Council, Ottawa, ON
Carleton University, Ottawa, ON
Centre d’expositons de Baie-Saint-Paul, Baie-Saint-Paul, QC
Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginie, United States
Churchill College, University of Cambridge, U.K.
Cobourg Museum, Cobourg, ON
Collection de prêt de la banque d’oeuvres d’art du Québec, QC
Confederation Centre of the Arts, Art Gallery and Museum, Charlottetown, P.E.I.
Dalhousie Art Gallery, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS
Douglas Hospital, Mc Gill University Health Centre, Montreal. QC
École des Hautes études commerciales, University of Montreal, QC
Fairleigh-Dickenson University, Madison, New Jersey, USA
Foundation of the Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal, QC
Foundation of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, QC
Galerie UQAM, University of Quebec in Montreal, QC
Gatineau Municipality, Gatineau, QC
Greater Victoria Art Gallery, Victoria, BC
Glenbow Museum and Art Gallery, Calgary, AB
Hart House, University of Toronto, ON
Hôtel des Postes, Musée Laurier, Victoriaville, QC
Institut canadien, Bibliothèque Gabrielle Roy, QC
Istituto Culturale e l'Arte, Catania, Sicily, Italy
Joliette Municipality, Joliette, QC
Kenderdyne Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK
Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener, ON
Newfoundland and Labrador Museum, Saint John, NL
Lamton Gallery, Sarnia, ON
Laurentian University Museum and Art Centre, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON
La foundation de la Vieille vigne, Dinan, France
La Vielle pulperie, Chicoutimi, QC
Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal
Lethebrige Art Gallery, University of Lethebridge, AB
London Art Gallery and Museum, London, ON
Loughborough University Art Gallery, Loughborough, U.K.
McGill University, Montreal, QC
McIntosh Art Gallery, Western University, London ON
Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK
McLaren Art Centre, Barrie, ON
McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON
Ministry of External Affairs of Canada, Ottawa, ON
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, QC
Montreal Municipality, Borough Lachine, Montreal, QC
Montreal Municipality, Borough Montréal East, Montreal, QC
Montreal Municipality, Borough St-Laurent Montreal, QC
Musée d’art de Joliette, Joliette, QC
Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Montreal, QC
Musée d’art du Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Mont-Saint-Hilaire, QC
Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
Musée d’art de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, France
Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC
Musée du Bas Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Musée de la Civilisation, Quebec, QC
Musée de Lachine,, Lachine, QC
Musée de la Côte Nord, Sept-îles, QC
Musée Louis-Émond, Péribonka, QC
Musée en plein air de Lachine, Lachine, QC
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec, QC
Musée régional de Charlevoix, La Malbaie, QC
Musée régional de Rimouski, QC
Musée d’art contemporain de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON
National Gallery, Washington D.C., United States
National Library of Canada, Ottawa, ON
New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, NB
Newfoundland and Labrador Museum, Saint John, NL
Nova Scotia Art Gallery and Museum, Halifax, NS
Nickle Art Museum, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON
Owen Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB
Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery, Oshawa, ON
Rodman's Hall Art Centre Collection, Saint-Catherine, ON
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, United States
Simon Fraser Museum, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland
Stratford Art Gallery, Stratford, ON
The Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, AB
The Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC
The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, MB
Toronto City Corporation, Toronto, ON
University of Moncton, Moncton, New Brunswick
Université de Montreal Montreal, QC
Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC
Canada: Archives Services et UQAM Gallery, QC
University of Saskatchewan, Regina, SK
Windsor Art Gallery, Windsor, ON