Marcelle Ferron 1924 - 2001

The year this canvas was painted, 1962, was a momentous one in Marcelle Ferron's career: her works were exhibited in Amsterdam (Peter Stuyvesant Collection), Paris, Toronto, Montreal, Spoleto, Munich, as well as in the São Paulo Biennale. By 1962, Ferron had lived and worked in Paris for nearly a decade and had found her signature style of wide palette knife strokes and luminescent colours contrasted with brilliant whites. She was at the apex of her career and was considered an ambassador of Canadian abstraction abroad.

Réal Lussier writes about the works of this period: Les compositions prennent plus d'ampleur et deviennent plus tumultueuses. Alors que les tracés de spatule ne cessent de s'élargir et de s'amplifier dans une gestualité très énergétique, la pâte demeure généreuse et la palette mise sur des accents de couleurs pures et brillantes ou dominent le rouge, le jaune, et le bleu. (The compositions are spacious and more tumultuous and the palette knife strokes are increasingly broad and intensified by her energetic movements. The impasto remains generous and the colour palette stresses pure and brilliant reds, yellows and blues.)