Microchromies

(At 1010 Broad)

Opening:
Thursday November 26, 2009; 5:00-8:00 p.m.

(‘Gallery Walk’ evening)

last day of exhibition:
Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Fernand Leduc begins his microchromies with marks – lines, forms - on a surface. He then applies a one-colour acrylic wash which – to a degree – pacifies the forms. A different colour wash goes on next; etc. Leduc‘s masterly achievements in this genre qualify him as one of the most innovative, inspiring colourists of our era.

These paintings are at once abstract and naturalistic – a rare duality which can also be observed in Turner and Matisse. Leduc does, granted, deliver the duality more abstractly or purely in that there is little if any naturalistic form, but the light is a transcription, as much as possible, of the light of the area where the act of painting takes place: for instance Chartres (1970-1984), Casano in Italy at the frontier of Tuscany and Liguria (1978-2005) and now (since 2006) Montreal.

Leduc came to Microchromies via Automatism and a fluid style of geometric colour-field painting. He exhibited at the main Automatiste exhibitions in Canada and in 1947 with the Montreal group at the Automatiste show at Galerie du Luxembourg in Paris. According to some critics, that exhibition is important for demonstrating that Quebec automatism prefigures the French ‘Abstraction gestuelle’ movement. Leduc in 1948 was one of the signatories of Refus Global which became an inspiration for the ‘Quiet Revolution.’ Leduc was living in Paris in 1946-1953. He continued as an Automatiste through that time, thus he did not wish to represent a place, but in retrospect he would see that the atmosphere of the place had imbued his painting. He has said, ‘I followed the voice of automatism always seeking the unknown. From unknown to unknown I was brought to the abstract’. The trajectory includes the interaction which in 1955 he instituted between hard-edge geometric form and colour (without recourse to the laws of figuration).

In 1959 Leduc returned to France and resided there until 2006 with the exception of 1968-1970 and 1970-1971 during which periods he taught in Montreal and Quebec City.  His paintings to 1969 continued to be geometric though from c1962 they were often more fluid than the French counterpart, e.g. Mortensen’s artwork. Leduc was partly following what his eyes were seeing in nature and the urban environment.

Fernand Leduc in his ‘Microchromie’ paintings (1970 to the present) has subtly superposed colour onto colour to optically produce a new tone understood as a special quality of light.