Marcelle Ferron

1924 - 2001

With a long and prolific career, Marcelle Ferron succeeded in “establishing a distinctive artistic identity based on both resistance and rootedness,” as Louise Vigneault observed in the exhibition catalogue for Marcelle Ferron, une rétrospective, presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2000. Ferron, the young artist from Louiseville whom author Vigneault deemed “part artist, part warrior,” occupied an enviable place within the Automatistes movement, and in 1948 added her voice to the Refus global manifesto. In so doing, Ferron cemented her place in the lineage of women painters, along with Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, who defied the patriarchal world of abstract painting, and positioned herself as a key figure emblematic of modernity in Quebec.

In 1961, Ferron won the silver medal at the São Paulo Biennale. In 1972, she was appointed a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and in 1983 she received the prestigious prix Paul‑Émile‑Borduas. Over the course of her career, Ferron took part in several important group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal has honoured her work with two retrospectives: Marcelle Ferron from 1945 to 1970, in 1970, and again in 2000 with Marcelle Ferron, a Retrospective 1945‑1997.