Pellan’s Entire Corpus of Prints at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Montreal. December 5, 2006 " On the occasion of the centenary of Pellan’s birth (1906-1988), the Museum presents, from December 6, 2006, to March 25, 2007, Pellan: The Prints, which features, for the first time, seventy-two artist’s proofs, Pellan’s entire corpus of prints, generously given to the Museum in 2005 by Madeleine Pelland. The exhibition will include too a number of drawings, collages and paintings, that served as starting points for the artist’s printmaking. The Museum’s collection of modern art from Quebec has been notably enriched by this outstanding gift.
(Media-Newswire.com) - In regards to Pellan’s prints, it is interesting to note that they are almost as misinterpreted as they are popular. Although, or possibly because, Pellan approached prints with a view to democratizing art ( notably by entrusting the Guilde graphique with their execution and by publishing them at reasonable prices ), this segment of his oeuvre has not been the subject of any critical attention. Not one of the exhibitions and publications devoted to Pellan’s art – except for the recent exhibition held in 2005 at the Maison des arts de Laval – has paid attention to the prints, even though they comprise some seventy-five titled works, a number of them collected in beautifully produced albums.
It will provide us with the opportunity to update our knowledge on this corpus. Pellan was introduced to printmaking in the 1960s, producing a number of silkscreen prints from earlier works, mainly with Éditions Markgraph, at the request of the Art Gallery of Ontario. But it was not until the early 1970s that he began to work in earnest on printmaking. He went into partnership with the brothers Richard and Serge Lacroix, well-known Montreal printmakers. Under their direction, the Guilde graphique would publish some thirty new prints, including the beautiful series of sets and costumes for “Twelfth Night” executed by Pellan in 1946, and “Les Polychromées,” from a performance project that consisted in projecting drawings on models dressed in white. It was also through his association with the Guilde graphique that he finally published his “Santa Claus” series, which he had undertaken in 1962 with the hope of making greeting cards, a project that never came to fruition, as he was unable to find a publisher. Finally, during the 1980s, Pellan published two albums with the poet Claude Péloquin. In 1981, he executed six etchings for an unpublished text by Péloquin entitled Le Cirque sacré. The following year, the poet paid tribute to the artist, taking inspiration from six other etchings for his Delirium Concerto.
Save for one work, Six fleurs, engraved directly on the copper plate by the artist in 1981, Pellan’s prints are all based on previously executed pieces – paintings, gouaches, collages or drawings. Although some of the earlier prints are simply faithful reproductions of the original model, most of them are the result of a process of interpretation and reformulation by the artist of his own works. He reframed the image, altered the scale and changed the colours for an in-depth exploration of the expressive potential of serigraphy. As Madeleine Pelland explained, “His aim was to make the colours stand out, to intensify them so that they dazzled.” How did he go about achieving this aim, case by case, from the original to the print? What light do the prints shed on Pellan’s art? Now that the Museum possesses all of the artist’s prints, it is time to ponder these questions and to display these works to the public.
The Museum has produced a box containing a 32-page mini-catalogue with colour illustrations and 24 greeting cards. The texts are written by Gilles Daigneault, an expert on the history of printmaking in Quebec.
Stéphane Aquin, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is in charge of the exhibition Pellan: the Prints.
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Information: Catherine Guex Public Relations 514-285-1600 Email: cguex@mbamtl.org
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