Lot 38: Pierre Gauvreau 1922 - Canadian oil on board La

Pierre Gauvreau 1922 - Canadian oil on board La Corriveau est en retard à soir 48 x 48 inches 121.9 x 121.9 centimeters on verso signed, titled and dated 19, février 1977 Literature:Pierre Gauvreau, Les trois temps d'une paix: Entretiens avec Michel Désautels, 1997, page 84 Provenance:Estate of Gilles Corbeil, Montreal Private Collection, Montreal Exhibited:Galerie Gilles Corbeil, Montreal, Pierre Gauvreau, 1978 Maison de Radio-Canada, Montreal, Pierre Gauvreau, 1987, catalogue #2 Verticale de jour (lot 109 in Heffel's Spring 2008 sale) was one of the works done by Pierre Gauvreau shortly before an important hiatus in his painting. There was no decision to stop painting, he said, it just happened. Of course, he had been maintaining a very demanding and exciting parallel career in film and television. La Corriveau est en retard à soir was one of the first paintings done after his return to active painting in February of 1977 (which has continued into the present). Speaking with Michel Désautels about this return, Gauvreau remarked, "It was fascinating and bizarre at the same time. The first brush-strokes, the first paintings, came out of me as if there'd been no interruption. I mean exactly as if I'd left off last night. The same colours, the same strokes, the same world. As if that aspect of my creative universe had just been on hold and was suddenly switched on again. As if nothing had happened in my life for thirteen years! It was almost hallucinating. That period lasted about three months, and then, suddenly, everything changed. More vibrant colours, larger formats, a completely different universe coming from my canvases." La Corriveau est en retard à soir can be seen as one of those transitional canvases, with brushwork resembling what we see in Gauvreau's work of the sixties. It is still of a modest size, but in much brighter pigments than the earlier work, and with a tension between bunches of heavy strokes and areas of more pure, flat colour, giving the impression of recession in depth, contrasting areas, even of landscape. In a few months, Gauvreau would take on much larger canvases, in the 200 x 400 cm range, with a mixture of geometric "windows," squares and triangles, and very active gestural calligraphy. This resurgence of a major Montreal painter was heralded in an exhibition at the Galerie Gilles Corbeil in Montreal, March 2 - 21, 1978. La Corriveau est en retard à soir was one of the paintings included in that show which marked a crucial turning point in Gauvreau's career. It was bought by Gilles Corbeil himself and remained in his collection until his death. Concerning titles: abstract painters often gave their works dates, numbers, or even the word "abstraction" for a title, apparently on the assumption that a non-descriptive title should signal the non-figurative quality of the painting. Gauvreau did not follow that trend. Instead, from very early in his career, he gave his works sometimes fanciful, apparently arbitrary titles, often with literary or historical allusions and elaborate word-play - as if the titles were an extension of the creative process of the painting, rather than an attempt to define it. In the case of La Corriveau est en retard à soir, there is a playful tension beween the painting itself, with its exuberant and colourful energy, and the ghoulish figure referred to in the title. In Quebec City in April 1763, Marie-Josephte Corriveau was convicted and hanged for the murder of two husbands. Her body was locked in a cage of iron and suspended from a post near Pointe-Lévis, horrifying the people around and eventually giving rise to spooky legends (see Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Les Anciens Canadiens). Her ghost may haunt this painting through the title, but it is not gloomy because she has not arrived yet, she is late this evening; just as, in the title of another colourful Gauvreau painting done in July 1978, she is on vacation. We thank Ray Ellenwood of York University for contributing the above essay.