Cool Capriccio

About Cool Capriccio

This contemporary, unique print is a colourful abstract by Paul Fournier.

Vivid, colourful visions—the language of master colourist Paul Fournier, whose ethereal paintings offer a glimpse of nature’s technicolour beauty imagined in expressive gestural brushstrokes. Fournier’s artwork is highly regarded for his intuitive sense of colour and spontaneous brushwork reminiscent of the 20th-century art movement in France called ‘les fauves’ (Fauvism). This monotype is a unique, one-of-a-kind print created by applying paint to a smooth, non-absorbent surface like glass or metal and transferring the image to paper by pressing them together. Expressive brushstrokes of turquoise, light green, yellow, purple, pink, red and white appear to waltz around the paper. The painting’s name, ‘Capriccio’, is an Italian word meaning whim or fancy, often used to describe music or art that is lively and free in form.

“You can do so many things with paint…it’s a wonderland.” Paul Fournier

"...Paul Fournier’s canvases seemed typical of his generation of Toronto painters. Like his colleagues K. M. Graham, Daniel Solomon, Paul Hunter and David Bolduc, Fournier demonstrated an almost Fauvist sense of color and an ability to be both playful and lyrical in the same picture.
Like them, too, he clearly admired Matisse and Jack Bush. Yet Fournier’s pictures were and have remained stubbornly personal, in a challenging territory of his own, a narrow zone between reference and invention."
Karen Wilkin, Canadian Art, 1991.

Paul Fournier was born during the Great Depression in Simcoe, Ontario. He first studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1959 and went on to study printmaking at McMaster University in Hamilton in 1967. Fournier also received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in 1996, where he’d also been the artist in residence. Fournier became a member of a group of artists in Toronto who were mentored by Jack Bush and together explored modernist expressionism. During a career that spans six decades, Fournier has had solo exhibitions in several Canadian cities and in the U.S. His work is held in private collections in North and South America and Europe. Public collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.