As a child, she dreamed of being an architect. But it is through painting and stained glass that Marcelle Ferron, who would have been 100 years old on Monday, will have left her mark on Quebec. A committed woman, she brought art closer to citizens, with her large glass roofs which adorn the Champ-de-Mars and Vendôme metro stations, the Granby courthouse and the exterior wall of the Sainte-Justine hospital. She also created works of public art in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the École Polytechnique massacre.
Born in the small town of Louiseville, and into a remarkably emancipated family for the time, Marcelle Ferron stood up to fate, choosing a profession where women were under-represented. His father, the notary Alphonse Perron, developed critical thinking in his five children, encouraging them, among other things, to read books banned by the Church. Marcelle Ferron lost her mother, who also painted, at the age of seven. She said that, on the day of her funeral, she found her mother’s tubes of paint in the attic, and decided to take over as painter. Registered at the École des beaux-arts de Québec, where her teacher was Jean Paul Lemieux, she was disappointed with the prevailing conservatism. Then, while passing through Montreal, she was dazzled by the paintings of Paul-Émile Borduas, and sought to meet him.
The revelation of Borduas
“After months of hesitation, she contacted Borduas and said: “Here, I’m trying to paint, but I don’t really know where I’m going. I’m a bit lost. Would you agree to come and see my works to give me your opinion?” So he comes to her house and looks at her works, says Éric Perron, of the Friends of Place Marcelle-Ferron, who is giving a conference on the subject on the occasion of the artist’s centenary. He makes comments to her on her works, comments that she will greatly appreciate. For her, it’s a kind of revelation. This meeting with Borduas is a kind of light. » Marcelle Ferron then participated in the meetings of the automatists without being registered at the School of Fine Arts.
Like the other members of the group, with whom she will sign the manifesto Overall refusal, Marcelle Ferron is a woman of convictions. Throughout her life, she defended the cause of the French language and the independence of Quebec, and access to art for the greatest number of people, particularly through public art. And how could she better embody this concept than by creating the glass roofs that light the Champ-de-Mars and Vendôme metro stations, where thousands of passers-by circulate every day? Marcelle Ferron also had to insist on being able to make non-figurative works, against the wishes of the site manager at the time, Robert LaPalme, who wanted the metro to be essentially decorated with historic glass roofs illustrating the history of Montreal, relates Éric Perron. Later, she would also get involved in the two referendums that proposed the independence of Quebec.
“There’s nothing stopping him. She is completely determined and she goes for it. She does not accept that her freedom is violated,” he said.
This taste for transparency, Marcelle Ferron would have developed during the long months of hospitalization and confinement in a room closed by a frosted glass door, which were imposed on her from childhood, because of tuberculosis bone that disabled her all her life.
And it was in France, where she left in 1953, alone with her three daughters, that the artist developed her approach to glass. It is also there that she created the very large format paintings that set her apart. In the book The right to be rebellious, which reproduces the artist’s correspondence with her brothers and sisters, Ferron expresses, from France where she lived for 13 years, her passion for painting which devours her and which dictates her steps, often in a difficult context. Éric Perron reports that it was thanks to a donation from a paint manufacturer friend, who delivered him an entire truckload of pigments, that the artist was able to continue practicing his art in France.
A wonderful storyteller
When he thinks of Marcelle Ferron, gallery owner Simon Blais, who is now the dealer of the artist’s estate, remembers a formidable storyteller, energetic and determined, despite her small size and fragile health.
“She was a very lively and funny person,” he remembers. The gallery owner first brought together an exhibition of paper works by Marcelle Ferron, during the 1990s. These paper works had the advantage of being affordable, the gallery owner recalls, which pleased the artist. “She always told me: I want the prices to be reasonable and everyone to be able to buy a work by Marcelle Ferron,” he says.
On the occasion of Marcelle Ferron’s centenary, the Simon Blais gallery will present an exhibition in three parts this spring, “paintings and works of paper where everything is almost new, and also fused glass, works that she made with the scraps from its large glass roofs,” he says.
The National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec (MNBAQ) will mark the artist’s centenary with a conference by Eve-Lyne Beaudry, curator of contemporary art at the MNBAQ, who “offers a journey from Marcelle Ferron’s production to based on the artist’s works preserved in the collection and the curious diptych Untitled “. On January 29, the Friends of Place Marcelle-Ferron will hold a tribute evening in his honor at the Outremont theater.