Lot 212: Ulysee Comtois, French Canadian 1931-1999 -

Ulysee Comtois, French Canadian 1931-1999 - Untitled tower forms; an 'Automatiste' sculpture, constructed of three towers with grey marbled plastic movable arms, the three towers attached to a circular steel plinth base, bearing signature Comtois 69, 84cm high, base 30cm diam. Note:Some of the most inventive art made in Canada in the period 1950-80 was in the realm of sculpture, exposing sculptors to a great variety of new materials; they responded with new kinds of constructions, multimedia works, installations and site-specific inventions, along with more traditional freestanding objects. Ulysse Comtois's paintings of the 1950's reveal a search for flexible structures identifying a post automatist aesthetic. He was torn at that time between the loose paint handling evident in the work of the automatists and the emerging geometrical rigour proposed by the new cultural statement of the 'Plasticiens' movement of Montréal. The more-or-less curved bars in his series of abstract paintings done between 1954 and 1956 would find later echoes in the modular form of the strips found in his playful sculptures of the 1960s. Comtois represented Canada in the XXXIV Biennal Venice. He showed his first-rate "columns" of articulated aluminium that the viewer can "re-configure" according to ones own "automatisms."