Marcel Saint-Pierre – Libérez la peinture!

From September 17, 2023 to January 7, 2024, this exhibition is presented at Salle Alfred-Pellan.

Guided tour: Saturday, October 7, 2:00 p.m.

Curator: Éric Devlin

At the end of the 1960s, young people in the West were questioning the established order: opposition to the Vietnam War in the USA, the sexual revolution, May 68 in France, and so on. The slogan "Il est interdit d'interdire!" ("It's forbidden to forbid!") sums up this breath of freedom sweeping through society. This protest also affected the visual arts. Young artists wanted to abolish easel painting and its quest for the masterpiece, the bourgeois utopia par excellence.

Laval artist Marcel Saint-Pierre (1944-2021), a native of Sainte-Rose, took part in this revolution, whose main focus was the Supports/Surfaces group in France. These artists freed the canvas from the straitjacket imposed by its rigid wooden frame. They imagined painting with something other than a brush or spatula. They dipped the canvas directly into the paint, folded it and crumpled it.

The exhibition Libérez la peinture! will focus on the first 15 years of Marcel Saint-Pierre's career and the development of this new way of painting.