Jean McEwen
March 18 - April 12, 2023
Jean McEwen, 1998. photo: Marc-Andre Grenier
18 March - 12 April, 2023
JEAN
McEWEN
OPENING RECECEPTION
SATURDAY, 18 March, 2023 from 2-5 PM
preview: Thursday, 16 March, 2023
a little about Jean McEwen
Jean McEwen wanted his abstract paintings to be an experience for the viewer. They are layered with translucent and opaque colour, and he is particularly known for his experiments in pouring and layering paint.
McEwen studied pharmacy at the University of Montreal, while maintaining an interest in poetry and painting. In 1951, less than a year after his graduation, he decided to pursue a career as an artist and soon found his interest was in non-representational expression and experiments. He was inspired by Montreal Automatiste members Jean Paul Riopelle and Paul-émile Borduas, who believed in spontaneous creativity based on tapping into the unconscious. Borduas encouraged McEwen to visit Riopelle, who was living in Paris.
McEwen moved to Paris in 1951 where he was influenced by the work of Riopelle, Jackson Pollock and Sam Francis. By 1952 he was painting in a style similar to Riopelle’s, using a palette knife to create all-over surface effects, a method he later left behind when he began working with his hands.
Beginning in 1957, McEwen worked on a succession of experimental
series that focused on creating flat, dynamic space through exploring the different qualities of colour. These pieces do not make any reference to nature but consider the relationship of the painting’s structure to its colour. They are made by means of a layered process with opaque and transparent pigment.
His later paintings were centred on a strong vertical plane that integrated the different sections of the image into a whole. McEwen understood this division to be about trapping light in the two sections by varying the opacities of paint. Although the artist’s primary medium was painting, he also created a series of artist books and a group of stained glass windows at Concordia University in Montreal. He exhibited widely until his death in 1999.
https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/jean-mcewen
Untitled 1/6, (#563), 1963, 19” x 12”, oil & varnish on paper
In the autumn 1963, during a visit to Crete and the island of Rhodes, McEwen became inspired by Greek icons. He returned to Montreal where, by year’s end, he painted the small-scale canvas works that comprise his “Icône” series. Untitled 1/6 and Untitled 4/6 share a formal affinity to the series. A supposition is that the paper-works owe in inspiration to icons seen on the trip, and that the paper works were painted either during it or in the forthcoming balance of the year.
Both series deploy horizontal tripartite structure, strong colour and varnish - three aspects which evoke icons. The paper works, though, add several other tell-tale characteristics, one of them vertical tripartite structure, the other calligraphy. These may be seen in the icono-stasis, the screen in front of the alter in Orthodox churches. Such icons are typically arranged both horizontally and vertically, in the latter instance the tier often three-part. The calligraphy, presumably totally abstract, recalls many icons’ strong graphic quality.*
Untitled 4/6, (#564), 1963, 20” x 12”, oil & varnish on paper
“There are two ways to judge a painting
The second is based on the sensations we get
One is based on criteria and theories of art. get before a picture. I paint the second way.”
Jean McEwen, 1956
This piece and the following one hail from a paperwork series chronologically following the 1964 oil painting series “Les Drapeaux Inconnus” (“The Unknown Flags”). This series of works was quite sought-after in its time. With the may rich layers of colour and saturated paint, the works were undeniably unique. This piece echos that vivid colour with the layers of blue and the deep gold leaf of this special work on paper.*
Sans Titre, Drapeau Inconnu (Untitled, Unknown Flag), (#511), 1964, 24” x 18”, Watercolour + goldleaf on paper
Sans Titre (Untitled), #487, 1964, 24” x 18”, Watercolour
Sans Titre (Untitled), #447, 1970, 12” x 16”, Watercolour
“McEwen had met both Riopelle and Francis (in 1951) when they were rediscovering the late works of Monet, especially his Water Lily paintings. Did Monet influence McEwen in a comparable way? Fernande Saint-Martin, and Evan Turner confirmed as much, both writers basing their accounts on conversations with the artist. There is much to be said for interpreting McEwen’s paint-thick surfaces as if infused with recollections of Monet’s mottled chromatic textures, with his painterly densities that stand in for leaves and tangled branches, and with is structurelessness across broad surfaces. Monet seems very readily at hand.”
“McEwen, according to Saint-Martin, said that he worked out how to express the vibration of colour from looking at “the lattice of light and shadows formed by the crossing of light through branches and leaves.”
If like Francis, McEwen learned from Monet, he also made him more “pure.” If somewhere, as McEwen implied to Saint-Martin, his voice had roots in natural observation, he expunged the representational in both space and colour, visual experience evoked alone by think and luminescent colour matter.”1
Sans Titre (Untitled), #625, 1973, 24” x 19”, Watercolour
Sans Titre (Untitled), #720, 1980, 16” x 12”, Watercolour
Sans Titre (Untitled), #171, 1981, 23.5” x 18.5”, Watercolour
Sans Titre (Untited), #500, 1989-90, 23.5” x 17.5”, Watercolour, ink and oil on paper
Sans Titre (Untitled), #514, 1993, 28.75” x 22.25”, Watercolour
Sans Titre (Untitled), #761, 1996, 26.75” x 18.75”, Watercolour
Cantate Des Colonnes 2 (Cantata of Columns), #231, 1996, 40” x 40”, oil on canvas
Curriculum Vitae
SELECT EXHIBITION:
2023 Jean McEwen, Wallace Galleries, Calgary
2020 Jean McEwen, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
2018 McEwen,”Poèmes barbares,” vingt ans après, Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
2015 Jean McEwen, Feuilles aux yeux de pluie (watercolours), Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
2014 Calque – Exhibition of Works on Paper, Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal
2013 Bleu, Winchester Galleries, Victoria
2012 Jean McEwen, La séduction de l’acrylique, Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
2009 Montreal: The 50s, 60’s, 70’s, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
2005 Early Paintings from the 60’s and 70’s, Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
2004 Jean McEwen: Last Works, Gallery One One One, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg
Jean McEwen, Rétrospective, Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
2001 Jean McEwen, Comme une acquarelle (watercolours), Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
1997 Important Paintings from the 60s & 70s, Mira Godard Gallery
1998 Jean McEwen, Poèmes barbares, Galerie Simon Blais, Montréal
1991 Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
Galerie Madeleine Lacerte, Quebec City
1989 Waddington & Gorce Inc., Montreal
1987 Waddington & Gorce Inc. Retrospective, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1986 Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
1985 Jean McEwen: A Retrospective, Waddington & Gorce Galleries, Montreal
1984 Jean McEwen: Thirty Years, Mira Godard Gallery
1983 Galerie Jolliet, Montreal
1982 Jean McEwen, New Paintings, Mira Godard Gallery
1981 Jean McEwen, Recent Paintings, Mira Godard Gallery, Calgary
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
1979 Jean McEwen: Suite Parisienne, Mira Godard Gallery
1978 Jean McEwen, Canadian Cultural Exhibition, Paris
1977 Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto
1976 Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Marlborough Godard Gallery, Montreal
1975 Marlborough Godard Gallery, Toronto
1974-75 Jean McEwen A Retrospective, Canadian Touring Exhibition
1973 Marlborough Godard Gallery, Montreal
McEwen 1953 - 1973, Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal (catalogue)
SELECT COLLECTIONS:
1972 Marlborough Godard Gallery, Toronto
1971 Galerie Godard Lefort, Montreal
1969 Galerie Place Royale, Quebec
Galerie Godard Lefort, Montreal
1965-66 Gallery Moos, Toronto
1964 Galerie Anderson-Mayer, Paris
Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal
Gallery Moos, Toronto
1963 Martha Jackson Gallery, New York
1962 Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal
Gallery Moos, Toronto
1960 Gallery XII, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1958 Galerie Denise Delrue, Montreal
1956 Galerie Actuelle, Montreal
1954 Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal
1951 Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal
Montreal Museum Fine Arts
Musée du Québec
Art Gallery of Ontario
National Gallery of Canada
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal
Hart House, University of Toronto
Winnipeg Art Gallery
Edmonton Art Gallery
London Regional Art Gallery
Vancouver Art Gallery
Queen’s University, Kingston
Confederation Art Centre
Toronto Dominion Bank
Concordia University
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
University of New Brunswick, Fredericton
McGill University, Montreal
Canada Council Art Bank
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton
Norcen Energy Resources
Secal-Alcan
Gordon Securities
Imperial Oil
Esso Resources
The Smithsonian, Hirshhorn Collection, Washington, D.C.
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All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the gallery
directors: Heidi Hubner & Colette Hubner
design & text: Colette Hubner, Indra Kagis McEwen & Peter Redpath
Cover image (detail): PEI, #393, 1970, 14.75” x 19.75”, Watercolour