Paris/Montreal, November 24, 2001
Press release FOR IMMEDIATE DIFFUSION

Marcel Barbeau will participate in this year's Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea in Florence Via invitation from the International Selection committee for the Florence Contemporary Art Biennial. Marcel Barbeau, Canadian painter and sculptor now living in Paris, will participate in this year's 3rd edition of this important international cultural event. The Biennial will be held from the 7th to the 16th of December at the Fortezza da Basso situated in the historical centre of Florence.

Barbeau will exhibit one of his recent works, Amour, Champagne et autres choses (Love, Champagne and Other Things), an acrylic on canvas created in December of 2000. This work inscribes itself in the series: "Diversions and Variations", a group of large format paintings, which were exhibited in the spring and summer of 2000 at the Galerie Montcalm in Hull and at the Maison de la Culture Côte-des- Neiges in Montreal, Quebec. For Barbeau, these compositions of ephemeral three-dimensional objects, which melt into the plane, apparent themselves, in their free structured coloured tonalities, and strongly contrasting dissonances, to contemporary music for which Barbeau has had a passionate interest since 1958.

Major figure of Canadian art, pioneer of expressive abstraction at the core of the Automatist movement in the forties, Marcel Barbeau evolved in the fifties towards a more structured art, without ever forsaking the lyric expressiveness of his youth. Marcel Barbeau had already exhibited in Italy, between the years 1962-1992, within the framework of various cultural events.

More recently, in the winter of 2001, he participated in the renown Salon de Mai in Paris. The film Barbeau, Libre comme l'art, which examines the artist and his oeuvre, could be seen at the FIFA (Festival international des films sur l'art de Montreal) in March 2000, as well as at the Festival international des films d'art et pedagogiques, in December of 2000 at Unesco in Paris.

One can find more information on the artist's career and oeuvre and namely the series "Diversion and Variations" on the artist's web site: http://www.marcelbarbeau.com.

The following is from Ninon Gauthier, art historian who is completing the extensive catalogue on this artist:

Marcel Barbeau was born in Montreal, Canada in 1925. He was a member of the Automatistes Group and signatory of this Canadian abstract expressionist art movement in 1948. He was a pioneer of abstract painting and sculpture in Canada in the mid-forties. He has lived, worked and exhibited in the United States between 1964 and 1971.

He has currently been involved in performances with dancer and musicians since 1972 (Caen, France).

His works are in most Canadian art museums and in a few public galleries in the United States and in Europe among which the Chrysler Museum, the Rose Art Museum, the British Museum (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).

He currently lives in Paris (France) spending a few months a year in North America.

Marcel Barbeau was an early and defining figure of Canadian abstraction, becoming one of its most diverse voices. With a practice that at times would bleed into collage, drawing, sculpture, performance, and music, Barbeau as a painter becomes a multi-disciplinary and rigorously experimental force rooted in principles of free expression and curiosity of form.

Early work, defined by gestural marks and dynamic scrapes, gave way to experimentation with OpArt* and interdisciplinary performance; throughout, he retained a sense of impulse and lyric energy.

Produced before a move towards the plastic geometries, he produced at the end of his career, Fol Ouiseaux, demonstrates Barbeau’s mastery of Abstract Expressionist painting. Influenced at this time by dance and music, the artist creates truly interdisciplinary work - here something free and expressive, a coloured trace of the artist’s movements.

A background of vague white is interceded by great splashes of green and red, all overlaid with a scriptural black calligraphy. These two rips of colour are meant to be read as birds in movement - crashing together in a flurry of feathers and motion.

Despite the tight restraint in palette and gesture, Barbeau manages to fill the canvas in only a few strokes, with paint streaming off to the edges in brisk sprays and agile scatters. A dance of pigment and movement, Fol Ouiseaux is a record of the experimental spontaneity and playfulness that Barbeau is best known for.