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A Peek at the MAJ Collection
This new selection from the collection presents works produced by five women whose pictorial language illustrates the aesthetic trends of modernism among Québec painters during the interwar period.
Before the art historian Esther Trépanier’s research on the subject, modern art in Québec was said to have begun in 1942, with the arrival of abstraction, or in 1948, with the publication of the Refus global manifesto. And yet, by that time many artists did not identify with tradition, academism, or regionalism from the aesthetic point of view. In these works, we perceive the influence of early-twentieth-century European avant-gardes, which were late to arrive in Québec. Modernism in painting brought new subjects (urban landscape, urban life, portrait), an increased emphasis on subjectivity, and expressiveness, along with arbitrary colours and plays on perspective that departed from representations of reality.
In the wake of the First World War, a growing number of women were acceding to the status of professional artist. The opening of the École des beaux-arts de Québec (1922) and the École des beaux-arts de Montréal (1923) contributed to this evolution. Agnès Lefort and Irène Senécal were among the first women to attend the École des beaux-arts de Montréal. Women were represented in various group exhibitions organized in the 1920s and were members of the Beaver Hall Group (1920–22), the Canadian Group of Painters (1933–53), the Eastern Group of Painters (1938–50), the Jewish Painters of Montreal (1930–48), and the Contemporary Art Society (1939–48), as well as groups of watercolour artists, printmakers, and artists working in other media. They had shows in Montréal galleries and in department store galleries such as Eaton’s Art Gallery, and their works were included in exhibitions that toured Canada and abroad.
As professional painters, teachers, and activists engaged in modernity, they were fully involved in the Québec art scene. Belonging to three generations of artists, Agnès Lefort, Irène Senécal, Lilias Torrance Newton, Ghitta Caiserman, and Rita Briansky are recognized for their contribution to modern painting in Québec – that is, for their art, their participation in the major exhibitions of the era, their dissemination and promotion of the arts, their teaching, and, of course, their involvement in artist groups. Although they have remained in the shadows, we are bringing them into the light today to show how their art is carried on in the spirit of younger generations of artists.
Read wall labels
Images in the banner:
Rita Briansky, Early Spring, 1953, Oil on panel, 61 x 108.1 cm
Lilias Torrance Newton, Portrait of a Child, ca. 1940, Oil on canvas, 38.2 x 33.4 cm