Mont-Saint-Michel, 1975
Oil on canvas
35 x 45 3/4 in
88.9 x 116.2 cm
88.9 x 116.2 cm
This painting is presently on view at our Toronto gallery.
$25,000
Inscriptions
signed and dated, “BELLEFLEUR 75” (lower right); titled, inscribed, signed and dated, “‘MONT ST.-MICHEL’/huile 50F/Bellefleur/75” (verso, centre)Provenance
Roberts Gallery, TorontoPrivate collection, Toronto
Literature
Guy Robert, Bellefleur ou la ferveur à l’oeuvre (Montréal: Éditions Iconia, 1988)
In Mont-Saint-Michel, Léon Bellefleur transforms one of France’s most celebrated monuments into a richly textured, semi-abstract vision. The familiar subject is evoked through an intricate accumulation of architectural fragments, shifting planes and vigorous passages of paint rather than through conventional representation. A luminous structure appears to rise from the centre of the composition, surrounded by a mosaic of slate grey, moss green, ochre, cream and flashes of coral red. Bellefleur’s varied handling of the surface - scraped, stippled, layered and drawn through with rhythmic markings - creates an animated landscape in which solid architecture seems to dissolve into atmosphere. The result is at once monumental and dreamlike: less a literal view of Mont-Saint-Michel than a poetic recollection of the celebrated site.
Painted two years earlier, Mont-Saint-Michel belongs to the artist’s mature period and demonstrates his distinctive ability to unite structure, colour and painterly freedom in an evocative and deeply personal composition. Mont-Saint-Michel was painted in 1975, two years before he received the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, Quebec’s highest distinction in the visual arts. His national importance had been affirmed by a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 1968.
Bellefleur occupies an important place in the development of modern art in Quebec. In 1948, he was among the signatories of Prisme d’Yeux, a landmark manifesto advocating freedom of artistic expression at a decisive moment in Quebec’s cultural history. The participants were strongly in favour of artistic freedom and in opposition to censorship in Quebec’s conservative climate of the period; they were less ideological than Borduas’ Automatistes, who published their manifesto the same year, 1948. Closely associated with the emergence of non-figurative painting in Montreal, Bellefleur developed a highly individual visual language informed by abstraction, Surrealism and spontaneous gesture.
On a purely commercial note, it is extraordinary that important paintings and ones of size by Bellefleur, Mont-Saint-Michel, as an example, can be purchased for such modest prices as compared to many artists of his generation. They are especially compelling price-wise when one considers prices for work by talented but aggressively marketed contemporary artists.
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Léon Bellefleur was actively involved in the abstract art scene in Quebec from its early stages. Along with a number of his contemporaries, Bellefleur was interested in the surrealist preoccupation with the subconscious as a source of inspiration. He was an original member of the avant garde group Prisme d'Yeux, founded by Alfred Pellan in 1948. He was aware of the radical developments of the rival Automatistes, and in the late 1940s he found inspiration in the work of European abstract painters, especially Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró.
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff purchased paintings from Léon Bellefleur from the late 1950s and last held a one-man exhibition in 1985. Bellefleur’s work can be found in all the major Quebec-based museums, the National Gallery of Canada, and the McMichael Collection.
Painted two years earlier, Mont-Saint-Michel belongs to the artist’s mature period and demonstrates his distinctive ability to unite structure, colour and painterly freedom in an evocative and deeply personal composition. Mont-Saint-Michel was painted in 1975, two years before he received the Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, Quebec’s highest distinction in the visual arts. His national importance had been affirmed by a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 1968.
Bellefleur occupies an important place in the development of modern art in Quebec. In 1948, he was among the signatories of Prisme d’Yeux, a landmark manifesto advocating freedom of artistic expression at a decisive moment in Quebec’s cultural history. The participants were strongly in favour of artistic freedom and in opposition to censorship in Quebec’s conservative climate of the period; they were less ideological than Borduas’ Automatistes, who published their manifesto the same year, 1948. Closely associated with the emergence of non-figurative painting in Montreal, Bellefleur developed a highly individual visual language informed by abstraction, Surrealism and spontaneous gesture.
On a purely commercial note, it is extraordinary that important paintings and ones of size by Bellefleur, Mont-Saint-Michel, as an example, can be purchased for such modest prices as compared to many artists of his generation. They are especially compelling price-wise when one considers prices for work by talented but aggressively marketed contemporary artists.
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Léon Bellefleur was actively involved in the abstract art scene in Quebec from its early stages. Along with a number of his contemporaries, Bellefleur was interested in the surrealist preoccupation with the subconscious as a source of inspiration. He was an original member of the avant garde group Prisme d'Yeux, founded by Alfred Pellan in 1948. He was aware of the radical developments of the rival Automatistes, and in the late 1940s he found inspiration in the work of European abstract painters, especially Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró.
Galerie Walter Klinkhoff purchased paintings from Léon Bellefleur from the late 1950s and last held a one-man exhibition in 1985. Bellefleur’s work can be found in all the major Quebec-based museums, the National Gallery of Canada, and the McMichael Collection.
