Crépusculaire

Pierre Gauvreau constantly reinvented himself throughout his career, becoming in turn an author, a screenwriter, a television director, and a film producer. In 1943, Gauvreau was invited to exhibit with the Société d’art contemporain, after which he and other artists from this circle of avant-garde painters founded the Automatistes, who would go on to publish the Refus global manifesto in 1948. In the mid-1950s, Gauvreau began to distance himself from the group’s influences to explore a freer, more gestural kind of imagery. He stopped painting in the early 1960s to focus on his work in the emerging medium of television, but returned to it in 1977. Crépusculaire (Crepuscular) was created in 1962, at the threshold of the long hiatus that marked a transition in Gauvreau’s career. The composition is established through a series of fierce yet precise gestures. Glowing ochres play off sumptuous tones of sienna and burnt umber, while jet-black silhouettes seem to dance in the twilight. The mystery of this painting unfolds between resistance and abandonment, power and breathlessness, in an exploration of the entire range of painting.