Marcel Barbeau

Painting for me is a necessity. As much as an act of liberty and passion, it is an act of joy. My work is never defined beforehand; it is projected, it projects itself and transcends itself until it reaches its final form. My most recent works set themselves apart from the fashionable trends in visual arts, which generally reject such notions as beauty and transcendence. If I had to name a domain that I felt close to, it would have to be new architecture because of the complexity of its expression. Starting from simple lines and forms with pure colors, I seek to create shifting images of lightweight structures that contain their own deconstruction and metamorphosis. Unlike the constructivists whose approach was based on science and reason, these anaconstructions, stemming from an organic articulation of space that is life-like in its complexity, transcend rationality and appeal to a sense of passion, to a sense of magic, much like my automatist works from the 1940s and early 1950s. Experimenting as I do, my creations are like gifts that would be given to me.

Exerpt from a text published in Écrits et témoignages de 24, Peintres Éditions Fini-Infini, Montreal, 1994.

Les arcs du désir - 2005
acrylic on canvas, 23 5/8 in x 23 5/8 in
[©ADAGP-Paris pour Marcel Barbeau]