Additional Images

Provenance:

Private collection, Montreal, QC

Note:

Gervais had met Borduas and Riopelle in Europe, and while she was not a signatory of their Automatiste manifesto Refus Global—being but 15 when it was published—her spontaneous approach, strongly held ideals and use of specific formal elements hold echoes of their work.

Using thick, minimally blended fields of paint applied with a palette knife or spatula, Gervais’ signature style is weighty, concerned with the materiality of her medium. Untitled perfectly showcases the chromatic purity of the artist’s works. So vivid is the canvas when viewed in person that it gives the impression that it was painted recently.

Viewing Gervais’ paintings in 1964, Dorothy Pfeiffer, the Montreal Gazette’s art critic, wrote that “…in spite of the amount in pounds of paint laid on her canvases, Gervais manages to suggest dimensions of space, depth, transparency, texture, and movement which are remarkable…colourful, stencil-like, paintings climb like exotic vines, or else soar like flights of birds of paradise. Everything moves, flies, rises, or flaps loudly in Gervais’ paintings. But nothing–absolutely nothing–flutters. In fact, the dominant note in her technique is ‘power,’ a power both authoritative and invigorating.” [1]

(1) A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II, ed. Colin S. MacDonald, (Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd., 1979).