Sans titre (Untitled)

About Sans titre (Untitled)

This contemporary abstract painting on paper is from iconic artist Marcelle Ferron.

Marcelle Ferron is an important Quebec artist who is perhaps best known both here and internationally for her profoundly beautiful and luminous work in stained glass. A modernist who chose to explore abstraction in both her luminous work in glass and in painting, Sans titre is a fine example of her remarkable sense of gestural form and colour. In this dynamic and elegant piece, passages of bright yellow and deep blue swirl around the paper, grounded by earth tones and flashes of white and red. The energy is palpable.

"I want my art to surround the ordinary man with happiness and colour." Marcelle Ferron

“Ferron applied paint to the canvas thickly, with great intensity and straight from the tube, often using a palette knife rather than a brush.” Ann Davis, Art Historian

Marcelle Ferron was born in Louiseville, Quebec, on Jan. 29, 1924. Raised in a creative family, she decided to pursue a career in the arts and attended the École des beaux-arts de Québec early in her adult life. Unhappy with the rigid instruction on modern art, she dropped out of the school. In 1948, she was one of a group of Quebecois artists who signed a document called the Refus global, a critical moment in recognizing Quebec's unique culture that helped pave the way for the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. In the early fifties, Ferron moved to Paris and over the next 13 years worked with some of the French masters in creating stained glass. She returned to Quebec in 1966 and over the next two decades completed several high-profile public commissions, including several stained glass windows at various metro stations in Montreal.

A celebrated Quebec artist in her lifetime, she was also recognized internationally by the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Ferron also worked as an associate professor at Laval University. In 1983, she won the coveted Paul-Émile-Borduas prize. She was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1985 and became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Marcelle Ferron died on Nov. 19, 2001. Her work can be found in the National Gallery of Canada and in numerous private collections in Canada and internationally.