Photography of artist Louis JAQUE (1919 – 2010)

Photography of artist Louis Jaque in his studio contemplating his obsession ‘’Light’’

Credit photograph unknown.

Note!!! – This post is for didactic purposes only!

Louis JAQUE (1919 – 2010) – Louis-Jacques Beaulieu  

Louis Jaque was born Louis Jacques Beaulieu on May 1, 1919, in Montreal and died on January 7, 2010, in Montreal. He was a Canadian painter who belonged to the Quebec modernist movement of the post war period.

Jaque received his diploma from the École du Meuble where he studied under Jean-Paul Lemieux and Paul-Emile Borduas in 1938.

He stared embracing abstraction in the 1950s influenced by the cubistic and constructivist movements. But his fascination for light and form made his work soft and away from Hard Edge geometric abstraction.

The curls and shining undulations propel the viewer into space. Their conical and tubist gradations recall Malevitch and Fernand Léger, whom Louis Jaque met on two occasions in Montreal during the war. The paintings of Louis Jaque achieve a synthesis between the modernist experiments of the “Optical Art” movement and of the concept of “Space Painting’’.

From his first gouaches to the large canvases light, was an object of fascination since his childhood and stands resolutely at the center of his artistic preoccupations. Forty years of painting to capture it, to modulate the interpenetration of Colors with the help of the roller starting in 1962, refine the transition between hues, restore to matter its immanent light and vibrations. The artist’s vision is that of the multiform emergence of the universe, and the northern lights, the Aurora Borealis.

His first important solo exhibition was at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art in 1966.

He was one of the founding members in 1969 of the Société des Artistes Professionnels du Québec (SAPQ) and its first president.

He made a monumental mural for the Quebec pavilion at the Osaka Universal Exhibition in Japan in 1970 and another one in 1972 for the Maison de Radio-Canada (CBC) on René-Lévesque Boulevard in Montreal.

In 1977 the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts organized a large retrospective exhibition of his work under the title: Louis Jaque, 25 ans de carrière. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

His works can be found in many private and public collections, mainly in Canada, France, Italy and the United States.

See an artwork by Louis Jaque