Rodolphe de Repentigny (Jauran)

Rodolphe de Repentigny, also known as Jauran, was born in 1928 in Saint-Laurent, on the island of Montreal, and died tragically in 1959 during a hiking excursion in Banff. Jauran was an intellectual, art critic, theoretician, painter, and photographer who, according to art historian Marie Carani, brought “critical energy to the Quebec art milieu, much like Borduas had done during the 1940s.” In response to the Automatistes movement—which led to the publication of the Refus global in 1948—Jauran co-wrote the Manifeste des Plasticiens in 1955 with Louis Belzile, Jean-Paul Jérôme, and Fernand Toupin. In this text, they “propose a new way of perceiving pictorial space,” through “a return to a more controlled, orderly form of painting,” writes art historian François-Marc Gagnon. The Premiers Plasticiens group held its first exhibition in February 1955 at the Librairie Tranquille.