- 113
Yves Gaucher 1934 - 2000
Description
- Yves Gaucher
- Ocres, Jaune et Vert
- inscribed by the artist HAUT, OCRES, JAUNE ET VERT, Gaucher and Jan/74 on the reverse
- oil on canvas
- 203.2 by 254 cm.
- 80 by 100 in.
Provenance
Literature
Sandra Grant Marchand, Yves Gaucher, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2004
Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, Toronto, 2007, p. 196
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Yves Gaucher may have begun his artistic career as a printmaker but he emerged as one of Canada's most important figures in modern abstract painting. A member of the second wave Placticiens movement, Gaucher's interests focused on creating hard-edged flat surfaces using line, colour, rhythm, and harmony that engage and even overwhelm viewers.
Music, one of Gaucher's greatest passions in life, was also his greatest inspiration artistically. During a 1962 research trip to Paris, Gaucher experienced an epiphanic awakening during a concert that included music by Austrian composer Anton Webern. Gaucher realized that he could use art to accomplish visually what Webern had created musically and, as a result, began elaborating on visual rhythms with counter-rhythms created through striking colour effects.
Ocres, jaune et vert belongs to Gaucher's Colour Band Series begun in the early 1970s. Like all works in this series, this work uses flat expanses of banded colour of varied widths as its dominant structure. The great chromatic tension in the work is emphasized by the work's enormous size. Gaucher believed that the viewer was integral in the completion of his work, stating that: "It's not what you see...but the state of trance that you can be put into by the work."
Ocres, jaune et vert successfully demands engagement; it is a trigger that induces viewers to both see and hear with their eyes.