Louis Belzile (April 17, 1929 – February 12, 2019) was one of the main figures of geometric abstraction in painting in Quebec and one of the members of the Plasticiens group in Montreal along with Jauran (Rodolphe de Repentigny), Jean-Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin.

Career

Louis Belzile was born in

Rimouski Rimouski ( ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski is the site of Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), the C ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. He studied at the

Ontario College of Art Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD, is a public art university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus is spread throughout several buildings and facilities within do ...

with

Jock Macdonald James Williamson Galloway Macdonald (31 May 1897 – 3 December 1960), commonly known in his professional life as Jock Macdonald, was a member of Painters Eleven (Painters 11, or P11), whose goal was to promote abstract art in Canada. Macdo ...

and Carl Schaefer from 1948 to 1952 and with

André Lhote André Lhote (5 July 1885 – 24 January 1962) was a French Cubist painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes and still life. He was also active and influential as a teacher and writer on art. Early life and education Lhote was born ...

in Paris in 1953. On his return to Quebec, he settled in Montreal where he met Jean-Paul Jérôme, Fernand Toupin and Rodolph de Repentigny (Jauran). They signed the ''Manifeste des Plasticiens'' in 1955, which read, in part (in translation):

"The Plasticians attach themselves ��to plastic facts: tone, texture, colors, shapes, lines, final unity that is the painting, and to the relationships between these elements".

In the 1950s, he used geometric forms and harmonious tones in his abstract painting to create, as the manifesto said, an equilibrium between form and colour. In his later work, he studied the way light fell on evanescent plastic forms.Denise Leclerc, "Louis Belzile". The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montréal 1955-1970'', p. 154, co-published by the

Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec ( en, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec), abbreviated as MNBAQ, is an art museum in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The museum is situated in Battlefield Park and is a complex consisting of four bui ...

and the

Varley Art Gallery Frederick Horsman Varley Art Gallery, or the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, is an art museum in Markham, Ontario, Canada. The museum is situated in a building on Main Street Unionville. The gallery was named after Frederick Varley, an artist from ...

of Markham (2013). Much later, he made sculpture such as ''Les trois âges'' (1987), which recalls miniature architecture. In 1956, Belzile became a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal. In 1958, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Montreal. In 1960-1961, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. He then taught at the Saint-Joseph teachers' college until 1965. From 1965 to 1985, alongside his career as an artist, Belzile had a distinguished career in the civil service, at the Ministry of Education. In 1980, Martin O'Hara published ''The Privileged Moment An Interview with Louis Belzile'' in the ''McGill Journal of Education''. In 2005, André Desrochers made the film ''L'intuition intuitionnée'' about the work of the Plasticiens. Belzile died on February 12, 2019, the last survivor of the first group of Plasticiens.

Selected exhibitions

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (, Paris' Museum of Modern Art) or MAM Paris, is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including monumental murals by Raoul Dufy, Gaston Suisse, and Henri ...

(1965); *''Belzile: ordre et liberté'' (Retrospective), Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup, (Québec) (1996) *''Les Plasticiens'', Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke (2005) *''La question de l'abstraction'', MACM (2012) *''The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montréal 1955-1970'', co-produced and circulated by the

and the

of Markham (2013), curated by Roald Nasgaard and Michel Martin. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication including texts by the two co-curators and others by Lise Lamarche and Denise Leclerc. *''Hommage aux Plasticiens'', Galerie Simon Blais, 2020

Public collections

Many public institutions in Canada have works by Belzile in their collection such as the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

, the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...

, the

Confederation Centre Art Gallery The Confederation Centre Art Gallery (CCAG; french: Musée d’art du Centre de la Confédération) is an art museum that forms a part of the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The art museum pavilion f ...

as well as museums in Quebec like the

, the MACM (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal), the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke and the Musée du Bas Saint-Laurent.

References

Bibliography

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Belzile, Louis 1929 births 2019 deaths French Quebecers Canadian male painters Artists from Quebec People from Rimouski 20th-century Canadian painters 21st-century Canadian painters Abstract painters Canadian abstract artists 20th-century Canadian male artists 21st-century Canadian male artists