Jean-Paul Mousseau
 
1927-1991

 
Jean-Paul Mousseau was born in Montreal, Quebec. In 1940, he began his studies at Collège Notre-Dame, where he also took up painting under frère Jérôme. There, he met Paul-Émile Borduas who served as an art critic for the school’s students and who was a personal friend of frère Jérôme. Mousseau became a member of the Contemporary Art Society in 1944, and exhibited with them even though he was only 16 years old. The following year, he participated for the first time at the Spring Exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He finished his normal schooling in the spring of 1945 and entered the École du Meuble in Montreal the following autumn. There he studied Interior Decoration for a year and met Marcel Barbeau and Jean-Paul Riopelle. He then studied under Paul-Émile Borduas until 1951.
 
In 1946, he was part of the first Automatiste exhibition along with Paul-Émile Borduas, Marcel Barbeau, Roger Fauteux, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc and Jean-Paul Riopelle. They were the first abstract painters to exhibit in Montreal. The following year, he exhibited with them again in Montreal and also in Paris. In 1947, Mousseau exhibited in Montreal with Jean-Paul Riopelle and the following year with Marcelle Ferron.
 
In 1948, Mousseau had his first solo exhibition. Later that year, he co-signed the Refus Global manifesto along with fellow Automatiste painters Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Marcelle Ferron, Marcel Barbeau, Pierre Gauvreau and Fernand Leduc. The book launch took place at the Librairie Tranquille in Montreal in August of 1948, and the next autumn Mousseau held his second solo exhibition at this same location. 

In 1950, Mousseau was refused at the 67th Spring Exhibition, along with Marcelle Ferron and Marcel Barbeau. They later regrouped with seventeen other artists and exhibited their work at the Exposition des Rebelles organised to protest against the Spring Exhibition, judged to be too academic and closed-minded towards Modern Art. The next year, he participated at the Recent Quebec Painters exhibition organised by the National Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibition travelled across western Canada and the western United States.
 
In 1953, along with Marcelle Ferron and Robert Roussil, Mousseau organised and participated at the La Place des Artistes exhibition. The exhibition gathered together around eighty artists and poets among which were Fernand Leduc, Guido Molinari and Goodridge Roberts. Mousseau exhibited with the Automatistes at their last exhibition in 1954, a show consisting of works chosen by Paul-Émile Borduas.
 
In 1955, Mousseau showed his work at the Espace 55 exhibition held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts along with Ulysse Comtois, Patterson Ewen, Rita Letendre, Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean McEwen, Fernand Leduc and Guido Molinari. That same year, he won first prize at the Winnipeg Show and caused considerable controversy among the critics and art lovers. The following year, Mousseau joined the newly formed Association des Artistes Non-Figuratifs de Montréal that had Fernand Leduc as their first president. Still in 1956, an exhibition on of Mousseau’s work was held at the Galerie L’Actuelle, founded a year earlier by painter Guido Molinari, and the National Gallery of Canada acquired a work. In the years that followed, the Association des Artistes Non-Figuratifs de Montréal organised many group exhibitions in which Mousseau participated.
 
In those early years, Mousseau was very much influenced by the work of Paul-Émile Borduas but as the years went by, he began experimenting more and more with different materials. In 1957, he worked with fibre glass and coloured resins to create sculptures and luminous objects. He also started working with ceramicist Claude Vermette hoping to integrate more artworks in architecture and public spaces. In 1958, he participated at the Art Contemporain au Canada exhibition at the Canadian pavilion of the Brussels World Fair. Later, a portion of that exhibition travelled across Europe.
 
In 1960, Mousseau exhibited his luminous objects, mainly lanterns, murals and lampshades. The same year, he won 1st prize at the Concours Artistique of the Province of Quebec for one of his luminous objects. The next year, Mousseau participated in a competition organised to decorate Hydro-Québec’s new head offices. Seventy one entries were received and judged by Jean Paul Lemieux, André Biéler and Evan H. Turner, Director at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Mousseau ended up winning the competition, and over the next eight months he worked on building a huge luminous mural for Hydro-Québec. At this time he also did two other murals: a luminous mural at the offices of the Montreal Star newspaper and a mural for the Drummondville courthouse.
 
In 1962, Mousseau participated in the organisation of the exhibition La Peinture Canadienne Moderne: 25 Années de Peinture au Canada. It was organised by the Quebec delegation in Paris and was held at the 5e Festival dei due Mondi de Spolète in Italy. Many artists exhibited with Mousseau including Paul-Émile Borduas, Patterson Ewen, Marcelle Ferron, Guido Molinari, Alfred Pellan and Jean-Paul Riopelle. In 1963, he exhibited a series of pastels at Galerie Agnes Lefort and later that year a retrospective show was held at the Collège St-Laurent bringing together works from 1943 to 1963. In 1964, he exhibited a series of circular paintings that the spectators could turn and choose the orientation of the composition.
 
In the year that followed, Mousseau kept making mural and other corporate projects for different institutions. In 1966, he designed the interior of the Mousse-Spacthèque, a discotheque in Montreal, where the participant’s olfactory, visual, tactile and auditory senses were constantly stimulated. Over the years, Mousseau did many of these entertainment places all over the country. He also decorated a metro station in 1966 and participated at many Quebec and Canadian exhibitions on the occasion of the Expo 67 in Montreal. At the end of 1967, a retrospective show was held at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal.
 
Mousseau has always been involved in different domains of the art scene. Over the course of his career, he was active in illustration, organised many events and was often called upon as an artistic adviser. He also played a key role in the theatre domain, making stage sets and costumes, designing lighting and props, making posters and signs, and designing the scenography for a number of plays. He played an important role in developing art in architecture, teaching classes on the integration of Murals in architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal from 1961 to 1964, and giving a course on “Architectural coloration” at Université Laval in 1968.
 
Starting in 1972 up until the mid eighties, Mousseau worked in Montreal for the Architecture Division of the Metropolitan Transportation Bureau as an artistic adviser. He was responsible for the creation of murals and for choosing colours for the metro stations. He died of cancer in Montreal at the age of 64. Following his death, a retrospective show was held at the Musée d’Art Contemporains de Montréal in 1997.
 
 
 
 
 
Collections:
 
- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, QC)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC)
- Musée d’Art de Joliette (Joliette, QC)
- Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Quebec, QC)
- Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Montréal (Montreal, QC)
- Musée du Bas St-Laurent (Rivière-du-Loup, QC)
- Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON)
- Art Gallery of Windsor (Windsor, ON)
- Edmonton Art Gallery (Edmonton, AB)
- Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC)
- The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa, ON)
- Maison de la Culture de Trois-Rivières (Trois-Rivières, QC)
- Concordia University (Montreal, QC)
- McGill University (Montreal, QC)
- University of Lethbridge (Lethbridge, AB)
- Canadian Art Council (Ottawa, ON)
- Cinémathèque Québécoise (Montreal, QC)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Hydro-Québec (Montréal, QC)
- National Bank of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Royal Bank of Canada (Montreal, QC)
 
 
Affiliations:
 
- Contemporary Art Society (1944)
- Automatistes (1946)
- Association des Artistes Non-Figuratifs de Montréal (1956)