Lot 49: Charles Gagnon 1934 - 2003 Canadian oil on canvas

Charles Gagnon 1934 - 2003 Canadian oil on canvas Southern 30 x 34 inches 76.2 x 86.3 centimeters signed and on verso signed, titled and dated 1963 Provenance:Galerie Camille Hébert, Montreal A Prominent Montreal Family Estate Exhibited:Concordia University, Montreal, Alumni Collects, May 20 - June 17, 1981 During the 1950s when most young Montreal artists looked to Paris, Charles Gagnon lived in New York, studying graphic art and interior design at the Parsons School of Design, as well as painting at the Art Students League. His first one-man show was mounted shortly after his return to Montreal in 1960, and was followed by many others over the course of his prolific career. While painting and photography had been at the heart of his art-making practice, he had experimented with and produced work in many other media. His interest in sculpture coincided with his work in paint on canvas, and simultaneously he began to work with the box as both a three-dimensional construction and as a subject for painting. He started using a particular shade of viridian green in 1962, and explored further the form of a square - the box as a figure - using variations on this green plus a few other signature colours. The results are spatially ambiguous, as the works use both splashed-on and painted-on colours that each seem to sit at different depths, causing us to consider space and form, and their relationship to the painterly plane.