Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, March 5, 2021: Marcelle Ferron, a Québécoise painter and stained glass artist (#1223)

Marcelle Ferron, GOQ RCA (1924 – 2001), a Québécoise painter and stained glass artist, was a major figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene, associated with the Automatistes.

Marcelle Ferron was born in Louiseville, Québec. Her brother Jacques Ferron and her sister Madeleine Ferron were both writers. She studied at the École des beaux-arts de Québec before dropping out, unsatisfied with the way the school's instructors addressed modern art.

Marcelle Ferron is one of the dominant figures in contemporary art, both in Quebec and Canada. Her career stretches over more than fifty years and, from the beginning, has been toward the exploration of new avenues in art.

Very early on she joined the group of painters known as the Automatistes, led by Paul-Émile Borduas. In 1948, she was one of the signing parties of the "Refus global" manifesto, a deed which was to bestow new vigour and spirit upon Québécois cultural life.

In 1953, she moved to Paris, where she worked prodigiously for thirteen years producing drawings and paintings and, at the same time, initiating herself into the art of the master glassworker.

Ferron participated in all the Automatiste group exhibitions, including the critically acclaimed retrospective, Borduas et les Automatistes at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971. Her work was exhibited in numerous collective exhibitions, both in Europe and the U.S., including: L'Exposition des Surindépendants and le Salon des Réalités nouvelles in 1956, the Antagonisme show at the Louvre in 1960, and at the Paris Musée d'art moderne in 1962 and 1965. She also represented Quebec at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1961, the Festival des Deux Mondes in Spoleto in 1962, and the Osaka Universal Exposition in 1970.

Her works have been the subject of more than thirty special shows throughout Quebec and Canada, as well as in Paris, Brussels and Munich. In 1970, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal staged a retrospective of her work, a show that was repeated in 1972 in Paris at the Canadian Cultural Centre.

Marcelle Ferron has been working with modern stained glass concepts since 1964. Her experiments with glass have resulted in a style of glass panel that can be incorporated into any construction design: private homes, public buildings and monuments, churches and temples and industrial complexes. Examples of her work can be admired in the Champ-de-Mars and Vendôme métro stations and the International Aviation Building, all in Montreal, as well as at Place du Portage in Hull and the Court House in Granby.

Marcelle Ferron works can be found in many major public collections in Canada, in the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, in the Stedelijk Museum in Armsterdam and the Hirshorn Museum of Washington.

Ferron trained at both l'École des Beaux-Arts de Québec and l'École du Meuble de Montréal. In 1961, she won the Silver Medal at the Sao Paulo Biennial, in 1977, the Québec's Louis-Philippe-Hébert prize and, in 1983, the Paul-Émile Borduas prize.

An associate professor at Laval University in Quebec, Ferron has participated in numerous seminars and given many conferences throughout Europe and America. She currently lives and works in Montreal

A nursing home in Brossard, Quebec, the Centre d'Accueil Marcelle-Ferron, is named after her. On 7 September 2019, Google honoured Ferron with a “google doodle” to mark the anniversary of the unveiling of her installation in Montreal’s Vendôme station.

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