Painter, essayist and poet, retired professor Marcel Saint-Pierre passed away at the age of 77.
Marcel Saint-Pierre (1944-2021), teacher and painter.
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The Department of Art History lost one of its pioneers on August 6. Painter, essayist and poet, retired professor Marcel Saint-Pierre (1944-2021), who taught at UQAM from 1970 to 2005, died of a long illness at the age of 77.
“Marcel Saint-Pierre was an extraordinary professor, who saw the history of art as a discipline that is experienced in the field”, launches his former student Marie Fraser, now director of the Department of Art History . “I remember a student who asked him, about a cultural event, how he could have such knowledge. Marcel had answered him: But because I was there! He spoke not only of what he knew as an art historian, but also of what he had been able to see and hear. Finally, he encouraged his students to get involved in the community, to organize exhibitions, to write about art, to meet artists. ”
The art historian studied at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Université de Montréal and the Université Paris X. A specialist in contemporary art in Quebec, he had a living knowledge of art scene of the 1960s and 1970s and has marked several generations of historians and art historians. His teaching was fueled by his dual training in art and art history. He combined theory and practice with ease, always attaching great importance to the materiality of things.
“At that time, in Quebec universities, we did not teach the history of contemporary art and very little Quebec art. Marcel Saint-Pierre was among the first to do so. ”
Marie Fraser,
Director of the Department of Art History
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“Marcel was a pioneer of contemporary art in Quebec, an art that he described, analyzed and documented when it was being made in the 1960s and 1970s, underlines Marie Fraser. At that time, in Quebec universities, we did not teach the history of contemporary art and very little Quebec art. Marcel Saint-Pierre was among the first to do so. ”
The professor has published numerous texts on contemporary art, notably on happenings and the works of artists such as Paul-Émile Borduas and Serge Lemoyne. He signed, among other things, the essay A guilty abstention. Political issues of the Refus Global manifesto (M editor, 2013). He also co-founded the literary review Bar of the day, in 1965, the review Chronicles. Art, culture and politics, in 1975 and, recently, the Complices editions, devoted to poetry and the artist’s book.
Winner, in 1992, of the Louis-Comtois Prize awarded by the City of Montreal and the Association of Contemporary Art Galleries of Montreal, Marcel Saint-Pierre has participated, as an artist painter, in more than sixty group exhibitions in Quebec, France and the United States. Since 1975, his work has also been the subject of more than 45 individual exhibitions in America and Europe. In 1992, the Galerie de l’UQAM opened its season with the exhibition Marcel Saint-Pierre. New York Thruway 87-90, which featured a dozen of the professor’s works. His creations are part of prestigious private and public collections, including those of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Marcel Saint-Pierre wondered a lot about the relationship between the surface and the support in painting. With him, the canvas bends to respond to the architecture of the exhibition spaces, particularly the corners and edges of the walls. Then, he will free the surface of the painting from its support. Thus will be born The mutations, skins made up of tens of liters of frozen acrylic. No artist before him had ever imagined a painting without support, a painting where color is self-sufficient.
Marcel Saint-Pierre has also produced several works of public art, including Falling Out of the Blue, in 1991, a huge relief painting in lush colors that adorns the ceiling of the main entrance hall of Pavilion R of UQAM.
The professor’s latest works will be exhibited at Salon b, in Montreal, during the month of September.
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