Lot 25: Jean Lefébure 1930 - Canadian oil on canvas Champ magnétique

Jean Lefébure 1930 - Canadian oil on canvas Champ magnétique
28 5/8 x 36 1/4 inches 72.7 x 92.1 centimeters signed and dated 1961 and on verso signed, titled and dated
Provenance:
Private Collection, Quebec
Private Collection, Toronto Jean Lefébure studied at the École des beaux-arts in Montreal, graduating in 1949. He then went on to train under Paul-Émile Borduas and became associated with the Automatists. Following the publication of the Refus global, he participated in a number of group shows with Borduas as well as showing alongside Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Marcel Barbeau in 1950, 1951 and 1952. Lefébure, like so many avant-garde Québécois artists at the time, was frustrated with the negative reception of his work, and left Canada for Europe. He studied and lived in Paris for a time, working with Henri Goetz and visiting numerous exhibitions. He traveled to Spain and lived a bohemian life, traveling with gypsies while continuing to paint. He exhibited his work in Madrid, then returned to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso. Borduas's influence was strong, and of all the artists who worked with him, it was Lefébure whose work bore the most marked similarity to Borduas's. Yet his open, large, troweled-on expanses of paint have a different quality from those of his mentor - they are as minimalist as this type of abstraction can be.