On February 10, 1955, Jauran, Jean-Paul Jérôme, Louis Belzile and Fernand Toupin issued the Manifeste des Plasticiens. Written by art critic Rodolphe de Repentigny—who, as we know, painted under the name Jauran—its release coincided with the opening of their exhibition at Montréal’s L’Échouerie gallery.
The initial lines of the manifesto set the tone for what followed:
The Plasticiens are painters who came together upon realizing that the visual similarity in their paintings stemmed from similarities in the way they painted, their pictorial approach and their attitude towards painting per se and its place in human society.
As indicated by the name they have chosen for their group, in their work the Plasticiens primarily focus on plastic elements: tone, texture, forms, colours, lines, the overall effect of the painting and the relationships among those elements, embraced as ends in themselves.
For the Plasticiens, a canvas was no longer a window. They wanted to rid painting of any incidental content, objecting to any manipulation of an artwork that would undermine it. They believed that their paintings should aim for “complete autonomy as objects.”
The four painters had been getting together practically every day for over a year at Rodolphe de Repentigny’s combined home and studio on Saint-Hubert Street. The manifesto was a summary of their discussions.
The exhibition was scheduled to run from February 11 to March 2 at the gallery, located at 54 Pine Avenue West.
With its string of art shows, L’Échouerie was then the “headquarters” for young artists, as well as a few poets. The manifesto was to top off the presentation of the Plasticiens’ work, which had been organized by Guido Molinari.
Following Automatisme, with the geometricist art of the Plasticiens Montréal once again became the cradle of an avant-garde movement, a unique phenomenon on the Canadian scene.
For their part, Jean-Paul Jérôme’s paintings were characterized by the absence of volumes, refinement of space and undifferentiated arrangement of forms. At once angular and flowing, his verticals could constitute a distorted grid, frequently offset by harmonies of purple, earth tones, sienna and grey.
While his approach to colour evolved, for Jérôme geometry was a base, not a dogma. Though rigorous, it was absorbed into his imagination and joy in painting. Jean-Paul Jérôme drew inspiration from a kind of biomorphism to express a sensorial vitality. Curls, curves, angles and structuring lines incorporated and orchestrated colour, first applied in flat tints and then at times, thanks to the use of decoupage, in the form of collage or two-dimensional relief.
As Jean-Paul Jérôme explained to me when speaking about his painting, “It’s not a matter of conducting experiments.” His works, fresh with vibrant, sharply contrasting colours, seem here and there to burst out of their frames, in spite of their solid architecture. Both responsive and intentional, fluid and emphatic, his work readily embraced the exploration of rhythm and movement.
Excerpts from a text by art critic and author René Viau entitled Jean-Paul Jérôme and the Legacy of the First Plasticiens. This text was written as part of the presentation of the exhibition Jean-Paul Jérôme: The Timeless Plasticien. This exhibition marks both the 20th anniversary of the death of the Jean-Paul Jérôme (August 14, 2004) and the 70th anniversary of the issuance of the Manifeste des Plasticiens (February 10, 1955).