Mr. Barbeau died Jan.
2 in a Montreal retirement home at the age of 90, severely stricken by
Parkinson’s disease but involved in art-making almost till his last hour. His
work during a celebrated career of seven decades passed through many phases and
transformations, but was abstract from beginning to end.
He was a signatory of
Refus global, a 1948 artists’ manifesto seen by many in Quebec as a harbinger
of the Quiet Revolution, and was one of the cross-disciplinary Montreal artists
known as the Automatistes. His first forays into action painting in the 1940s
may have predated those of Jackson Pollock. Mr. Barbeau literally danced some
of his works into creation, flitting before a huge canvas while making rapid
spontaneous daubs with a brush on a pole. Film footage of him doing this, while
musicians or dancers improvised nearby, is still fascinating to see, decades
after the event.
Fiercely independent,
he pursued his devotion to his art through many life challenges, including
periodic poverty and bipolar disorder, which “affected a large part of his
life,” according to Marie-Ève Tanguay, a gallery professional who worked for
him.
Mr. Barbeau was born
on Feb. 18, 1925, into the working-class Montreal family of Philippe and
Elisabeth (née St-Antoine) Barbeau. Young Marcel lost his father at the age of
3, and was partly raised by an uncle who owned a grocery. He began drawing as a
child and, at 18, while learning carpentry at the École du meuble, met the
artist Paul-Émile Borduas, a teacher at the school. Mr. Borduas had trained to be
a church painter, but had recently begun making spontaneous gestural works
based on the “automatic drawing” practice of some European Surrealists.
