Fernand TOUPIN R.C.A. (1930-2009)
Known for his participation in the group Les Plasticiens, Fernand Toupin starts his artistic formation by taking drawing classes at Collège Mont-Saint-Louis in Montréal. He then studied at l’École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. From 1949 to 1953, he works in Stanley Cosgrove’s workshop. Toupin’s artistic career really begins in 1954. In 1955, he signs with Louis Belzile, Jean-Paul Jérôme and Jauran (Rodolphe de Repentigny) the Plasticiens’ Manifesto, written by Rodolphe de Repentigny. Opposed to the spontaneous and expressive art of the Automatists, Les Plasticiens endorse an art particularly inspired by Mondrian and participate in the emergence of the geometrical abstraction movement in Québec. Within this new movement, the image is considered like a bidimensional object that refuses any depth effect on the canvas. Fernand Toupin’s “shaped canvas” or “object-canvas” as the art critics named them, remain an important contribution from the artist to the movement.
In the 60s, Toupin’s art engages in a new direction. Always interested in abstraction, the artist explores texture with a more abundant material on the canvas, where pigments are mixed with marble dust. Toupin expresses his surrounding environment: Québec’s landscapes. “I like to feel the simmering of things as they are made. The uprising of the waves. The freshness of the snow. The ubiquity of the minerals.” In 1992, Fernand Toupin creates a last series of small canvas, which will materialize this idea before going back to geometrical abstraction in 1993 until his last painting in 2001.
Parallel to his career as a painter, Toupin was the exhibition Director for the Association des artistes non-figuratifs de Montréal, from 1963 to 1974. In 1977, he is elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (R.C.A). During the same year, he creates a mural titled “Hochelaga” for the venue Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place-des-Arts. His paintings are part of numerous museums and public collections such as: the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Canada, as well as in several private collections in Canada, United-States and Europe.
Source : Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
CLIQUEZ ICI/CLICK HERE (115 downloads) to download the visual pamphlet of the exhibition “TERRITOIRES INSOUPÇONNÉS”CLICK HERE to watch our visual tour of the exhibition “TERRITOIRES INSOUPÇONNÉS” on Youtube.
Artworks marked with a * are available but not in gallery.
