Marcelle Ferron 1924 - 2001

Private Collection, Montréal

Réal Lussier, Marcelle Ferron, Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal, 2000, pg. 16, reproduced.

The avant-garde movement of the 1950s saw a resurgence in public art in Québec that would last well into the 1970s.  When Ferron returned to Canada in the mid-1960s, the socio-political potential offered by large scale public works was not lost on her, and for the next fifteen years she dedicated herself entirely to public commissions.  Ferron's magnificent public works, both murals and stained glass, contributed to making contemporary art accessible to a wider popular audience by literally inserting it into the environment.

In the summer and autumn of 1963, Marcelle Ferron realized a twelve-panel mural for the Caisse d'économie des employés du Canadian National today Caisse d'économie du Rail in Pointe Saint-Charles in Montreal.  The mural was inaugurated in the spring of 1964. The panels have since been broken up; this lot comprises three of the original twelve.

Figure 1 depicts the artist in her studio working on this commission.  Unusually for Ferron, who is closely associated with the palette knife, she painted this mural with rollers, probably on account of its large size.