HEFFEL FINE <strong>ART</strong> AUCTION HOUSE 179 PAUL~ÉMILE BORDUASCAS QMG RCA 1905 ~ 1960Ouvertures imprévuesoil on canvas, signed and dated 1956and on verso titled on the Dominion Gallery label13 x 16 in, 33 x 40.6 cmPROVENANCE:Dominion Gallery, MontrealPrivate Collection, OntarioOuvertures imprévues belongs to Borduas’s Parisian period of 1955 to1960. In 1956, Paul~Émile Borduas, who had not yet succeeded inmaking any fruitful contact with galleries or museums in Paris, receivedsuccessive visits from Canadian gallery owners and collectors, whoacquired most of his production of the preceding months. Max Stern ofthe Dominion Gallery in Montreal came in May and acquired 13 oil oncanvases, among them our Ouvertures imprévues, and 11 watercolours.Soon after, Montreal collectors Gerard and Gisele Lortie visited Borduas’sstudio and acquired six paintings; in July, Montreal gallery owner AgnèsLefort bought two paintings; in August, R.H. Hubbard from the NationalGallery obtained the famous Sea Gull; and finally in September, MarthaJackson, the well~known New York gallery owner, acquired nine of hismost recent paintings. This enabled Borduas to take a break after thisintensive period of work; he bought a Simca convertible car and made atrip to Italy later in September.All these commercial activities were certainly beneficial for the painter,but create some difficulties for the historian! Paintings sold to galleryowners or to private collectors tend to disappear from sight and renderthe task of reconstructing the painter’s development difficult. Forinstance, of all the oil on canvas works acquired by Max Stern in May, onlyone was known until recently ~ the famous Expansion rayonnante, a blackand white work from 1956, now in the collection of the MontrealMuseum of Fine Arts (a gift of Dr. and Mrs. Stern in 1978). This is why theemergence of Ouvertures imprévues is so exciting. Obviously it precedesthe advent of his black and white paintings, but more importantly, itshows how Borduas finally succeeded in integrating the NewYork~influenced watercolours that he had made two years previously.In New York, Borduas had been intrigued by Jackson Pollock’s driptechnique and had tried his hand at it in some of his watercolours of 1954.But nothing of that transpired in his oils of the period. It was only in Paristwo years later, as our Ouvertures imprévues clearly shows, that he found away to integrate, if not dripping itself, at least an equivalent of it bydelicate traces of the painter’s knife used on its edge here and there abovethe white, grey and red background. These traces of black are in fact morecalligraphic, almost Japanese, than anything done by Pollock and showhow Borduas succeeded in adapting his own vocabulary for what hadfascinated him before. These traces of black were obviously added to awhite and grey (with tiny spots of red) composition and tended to suggesta reading in depth. Perhaps this is what suggested the title of UnpredictedOpenings. When these “openings” would begin to be painted in solidblack instead of these subtle gradations of grey and brown, we wouldenter the black and white period for which Borduas is famous. Here weare just before this event in his development and it is because of this,I believe, that Ouvertures imprévues is so touching. It is a perfectlycontrolled composition, alternating vertical and horizontal strokes ofwhite and grey that come from the four edges of the surface towards thecentre, where most of the “openings” occur. This is Borduas at his best.In Paris he spoke of his admiration for Mondrian, and something of thatregard is shown in this rigorous composition. But the spontaneity and theobvious speed and mastery of the handling of paint make us forgetwhatever influences may have played here, and we are delighted with thesheer beauty of the painting.We thank François~Marc Gagnon of the Gail and Stephen A. JarislowskyInstitute of Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, forcontributing the above essay.ESTIMATE: $80,000 ~ 100,000
HEFFEL FINE <strong>ART</strong> AUCTION HOUSE 1810
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