Lot 47: Jacques Hurtubise 1939 - Canadian acrylic on canvas diptych Sans titre

Jacques Hurtubise 1939 - Canadian acrylic on canvas diptych Sans titre
23 7/8 x 40 inches 60.6 x 101.6 centimeters signed and dated 1987
Provenance:
Private Collection, Toronto In addition to the overall measurement above, each canvas measures 23 7/8 x 20 in, 60.6 x 50.8 cm.
In 1956, when Jacques Hurtubise was just 17, he enrolled at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal. With the funds from the Max Beckmann Scholarship in his senior year, he was able to travel to New York, where he saw works by Willem de Kooning and Kasimir Malevich. He returned to Montreal in 1961 and, fresh from his New York experience, had his first exhibition. He was then included in the important 1965 Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil.
His colourful graphic work ranges from hard-edge, lyrical and geometric to free-form; he was a bold experimenter. In the late 1980s Hurtubise's work was created with reference to forms from nature - clouds and birds - as well as water, which had long played a role in his imagery. He began to experiment with folding and pressing unstretched canvas against itself to create a reverse image. Vivid butterfly-like forms, or dark forms with overtones of masks, bats and birds were the result. Black and white paintings are the one constant in his work; he considered the use of these two simple colours a means to discover new paths.