Hugh John Barrett – A Tribute to his Surrealist, Magical Realism, and Magical Fantasy Works.

Hugh John Barrett – A Tribute to his Surrealist, Magical Realism, and Magical Fantasy Works.

Magical realism, or the marvelous, intrudes upon the setting of an entirely ordinary everyday life, while magical fantasy blends dream, myth, and mystery.

Like most artists throughout history, Hugh John Barrett also had masters he admired, who influenced his pictorial language. Besides his teachers Arthur Lismer and Goodridge Roberts, who profoundly impacted him, we must mention the instructors and professors at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the École du Meuble de Montréal: Jacques de Tonnancourt, Moe Reinblatt, Louis Archambault, and Gentile (Gerry) Tondino, who is also mistakenly known as Gérald Tontino.

Two other Quebec painters played a decisive role:

Jean-Philippe Dallaire, for his fantastical, folkloric, and whimsical worlds.

Jean-Paul Riopelle, for his wildly delicate, linear, and textured lines and gestural compositions.

In Barrett’s work, Riopelle’s influence is evident in his increasingly intense, vibrant, and abstract undergrowth scenes.

Dallaire’s influence appears in his profoundly surreal and fantastical compositions.

Three other sources nourished his imagination:

Inuit and Cree art and the relationship between organic forms and inner worlds.

Paul Klee, with his theories on color…

Flirting with Op Art and psychedelic art…

His time spent in the Far North also awakened in him a true obsession with light.

!!!!!!!! Note:

This brief overview allows us to free Barrett from the reductive label of “landscape painter ” and reveal the true depth of his work: that of an existentialist and surrealist creator, a seeker of light and meaning whose vision far transcends the boundaries of reality.

Photo 1 (Home) – Photograph of Canadian artist Hugh John Barrett in 1974

Photo 2 – The Little Happiness, circa 1970 – Oil – 123.9 × 184.8 cm (48.75 × 72.75 in)

A magical, fantastical work, bordering on surrealism.

American and South American surrealists often blended Indigenous legends and folklore—primitive masks fascinated them.

In Barrett’s case, it is Quebec legends, Indigenous influences, and their art that nourish his universe.

The undergrowth or the garden is never a passive setting: it is a space inhabited by invisible forces, spirits, an animistic vision of the world where each plant or mineral form possesses its own life and its own inner light.

Photo 3 – Surrealist Still Life: Organic, Vegetal, and Mineral Forms Between Land and Sea, 1975 – Oil – 152.5 × 182.8 cm (60 × 72 in)

A quasi-sculptural and surrealist work.

Amorphous forms, the influence of dreamlike imagery, and the starkness inherited from Cubism converge here.

The overall vibrancy and atmosphere evoke Jean Dallaire and the tapestries of Jean Lurçat. – A modern style that is at once fantastical, surreal, and symbolic.

Photo 4 – Angry Lark – Acrylic, circa 1972–1974 – 127 × 91.5 cm (50 × 36 in)

Surrealist and symbolic.

Impressive, stark, and poetic… almost wordless.

A highly political work. – Perhaps a reference to the song by Félix Leclerc?

The lark, a traditional Quebec symbol, is no longer a joyful spring bird here, but a wounded voice crying out its anger at injustice.

Photo 5 – Garden for Léocadia, 1971 – Acrylic – 102 × 76.2 cm (40 × 30 in)

Surreal, fantastical, with certain details that flirt slightly with Op Art.

The canvas seems to visually translate an almost surreal accumulation of floral elements, shapes of interlocking cups and receptacles.

It is a mental, reconstructed garden, both poetic and suffocating. The composition is saturated with cellular forms, open fruits, and stylized plant elements that intertwine in a green and red kaleidoscope.

The garden is not realistic: it evokes a romantic obsession.One can discern an almost Cubist rigor of construction in the fragmentation of planes, but treated with a unique organic fluidity.

And perhaps, more profoundly, a reverence for Jean Anouilh’s play Léocadia.

Photo 6 – Abstract and Symbolic Composition, circa 1967 – Tempera and ink on paper – 60.9 × 45.7 cm (24 × 18 in)

Recurring motifs—circular, cellular, or honeycomb-textured structures—give the work a vibration akin to Op Art, the art of optical illusion.

Could it be called Bon Voyage dans la lune (Have a Good Trip to the Moon)?

This work is a masterpiece of balance between: the cold, geometric abstraction of the Nordic landscape, and the warm, organic, and mythological surrealism of the disc.

It perfectly embodies this unique intermediate style: the passage from a dreamlike symbolism to an abstraction imbued with the spirit of the Quebec and Indigenous territory.

Duality reigns here: a mirror of his soul, the secret driving force behind all his work.

For Barrett, painting is an outlet where opposites clash and find balance, translating his own inner tensions.

Photo 7 – Summer, 1994 – Acrylic – 152.5 × 182.8 cm (60 × 72 in)

Magical realism and light. – Here, he returns to his true style of painting, after having briefly embraced a more commercial approach. The chiaroscuro inspired by Caravaggio and Rembrandt resonates deeply with him. Family and loved ones, as with Rembrandt, regularly serve as his models.

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The aim is not to suggest that he was a follower or a copyist, but rather to remind everyone that he fully deserves his place among the masters.

As Picasso said, “A bad artist copies what he sees. A good artist steals what he sees.” Barrett, on the other hand, transformed what he saw—he absorbed it, metamorphosed it, and made it his own.

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Sources: Gallery archives, letters from Hugh Barrett, Erudit, Archives – Expositions – Vie des arts, Volume 20, Number 80, 1975, Pages 69-73 – Theatre des Lucemaire, Coups d’œil, Maze, IA et nous MI&AdesR (MIAR)

References: Robert 78; Digital collection of prints from the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec; Artistes plasticiens by Comeau; Art Auctions 1976-1978; Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol. 1, pp. 188-189.

Literature: Vallée 89; Vallée 93; Boulizon; Robert 83; Roussan 82;

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