Bourgarde

Artist Biography: 1906-1988. Born in Québec City, Québec. At age 17, when he was still a student at Québec's École des beaux-arts (1920-25), the National Gallery of Canada purchased his painting Corner of Old Québec. He also won Québec's first-fine arts scholarship in 1926, which allowed him to study in Paris where he remained until 1940. He returned to Canada during the Second World War, and settled in Montréal. The influences of Paris brought more intense colour, fluid lines and more abstract images, while his cubist and surrealist art was too avant-garde for the Canadian art market. He taught at Montréal's École des beaux arts from 1943 to 1952. In the mid-1940s, he began illustrating poetry books and designed costumes and sets for the theatre. He led the formation in 1948 of Prisme d'yeux, a group of artists whose manifesto called for an art free of restrictive ideology. He moved back to Paris in 1952 after receiving a Royal Society of Canada grant and lived there until 1955. He then became the first Canadian to have a solo exhibition at the Musée national d'art moderne. He is the subject of several monographs and films and the recipient of many awards and honours include the Prix Émile-Borduas (1984), and was an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec (1985). https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/alfred-pellan