Marcelle Ferron

1924-2001

Marcelle Ferron was born in Louiseville, Quebec. She grew up in an affluent family of five children. Following her mother’s death when she was only seven years old, her father decided to raise the children in a very open-minded way. This would later lead them to becoming independent, socially engaged and adventurous young adults.

Ferron became interested in art at the age of 15 through an art teacher at the convent she attended. She then studied a year with Jean Paul Lemieux and Simone Hudon at École des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City (1942-1944) but finding the education too rigid and academic, she left before the end of her studies. In the years that followed, she got married, had her first child and kept painting and learning by herself, but felt lost and in need of direction in her painting.

In 1946, inspired after seeing the work of Paul-Émile Borduas, she contacted him and he agreed to come and see her work. Ferron received his criticism and Borduas then advised her that she should come and study with him at the École du Meuble in Montreal where he was a teacher. At that time, Borduas also introduced her to other young artists that revolved around him and that would later become members of the Automatists: Pierre Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Fernand Leduc, Marcel Barbeau and others. She was one of the last artists to join the Automatistes group in 1946. She started exhibiting her works with the Automatists, either at a private location such as Pierre Gauvreau’s apartment, or at different shows either in Canada (Art Association of Montreal, 1947) or abroad (Democratic Youth Festival in Prague, 1947).

In 1948, she was one of the youngest co-signers of the Refus Global manifest. Following the publication of the manifest, Borduas lost his job at the Ecole du Meuble and Ferron stopped studying. Borduas went to Paris while Ferron stayed in Montreal and kept painting and exhibiting her work. She held her first solo exhibition in 1949 at Librairie Tranquille in Montreal.

In 1950, she was refused at the 67th Spring Exhibition, along with fellow artists Jean-Paul Mousseau and Marcel Barbeau. They would later regroup with seventeen other artists and exhibit their work at the Exposition des Rebelles (Rebels Exhibition) organised to protest against the Spring Exhibition, judged to be too academic and closed-minded towards Modern Art.

In 1953, she moved to Paris with her three daughters. She stayed there for thirteen years, frequented the Paris cafés and made connections with artists settled in Paris, or passing through, such as Léon Bellefleur, Jean Lefébure, Edmund Alleyn, Charles Delloy and Jean-Paul Riopelle. At that time she took classes in Paris under Michel Blum (1964), a glasswork artist. She participated in many group and solo exhibitions in galleries and was part of the art shows at the Salons d’Art Contemporains held the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. During this time she also exhibited her work in Canada, the United States and many other countries in Europe (Germany, England, Italy and the Netherlands).

From then on her work started to be noticed and well appreciated. She was given a scholarship from the Canadian Council of Arts in 1957; a prize from the Montreal Museum of Fine-Arts in 1960; in 1961, she represented Quebec at the Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil and won a Silver Medal, a first for a woman at this exhibition; and in 1964 the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec also gave her a prize for her painting. Her sojourn in France was significant for her career as a painter. It was an internationally recognized artist who returned to Quebec.

After being expelled from France due to her political ideas and acquaintances, she came back to Montreal in 1966. She started working again with stained-glass and did what is considered to be her masterpiece in this medium, the windows at the Champs-de-Mars Metro Station in Montreal, being built for the 1967 World Fair, Montreal’s Expo ‘67. She created many public works in this medium until 1973.

In 1967 she started teaching at Université Laval in Quebec City. She taught Architecture from 1967 to 1970 and would later teach Visual Arts from 1970 to 1979. During those years, she was elected a Member of the Royal Canadian Academy (1972).

In 1973, she went back to painting full-time, and exhibited her works in galleries and museums in Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Paris and Mexico, either in solo or group exhibitions. The first retrospective Exhibition of her work was held in 1976 at the Musée d’Art de Joliette in Quebec; the following year, she was awarded the Louis-Philippe Hébert Prize. Furthermore a film was produced on her, for broadcast on the French CBC. It would be the first of many films dedicated to her life and work.

Consecration of her work came in 1983 when she was the first woman awarded the Paul-Émile Borduas Prize, the highest honour conferred upon visual artists by the Quebec Government. Two years later she was made Chevalier of the Ordre National du Québec.

In 2000, she was named Grand Officier of the Ordre National du Québec and a retrospective show was held at the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal. She died a year later in Montreal at the age of 77.

Collections:

- National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON)
- Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Montreal, QC)
- Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, QC)
- Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Quebec, QC)
- Musée d’art de Joliette (Joliette, QC)
- Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo (Sao Paolo, Brazil)
- Agnes Etherington Art Center (Kingston, ON)
- Concordia University (Montreal, QC)
- Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Loto-Quebec Collection (Montreal, QC)
- Hydro-Quebec Collection (Montreal, QC)
- Firestone Art Collection (Ottawa, ON)
- National Bank of Canada (Montreal, QC)
- Power Corporation of Canada (Montreal, QC)

Affiliations:

- Contemporary Art Society (1947)
- Association des Artistes Non-Figuratifs de Montréal (1957-1960)
- Société des Artistes Professionnels du Québec (1968)
- Cercle des Artsites-Peintres du Québec (1974)
- Royal Canadian Academy (1974)
- Quebec Modern Group