Le bal du monde (1992) is part of a body of work created between 1989 and 1993 by Jean‑Paul Jérôme, in his studio in Varennes, Quebec. Jérôme considered this period as pivotal to his career as the earlier Plasticiens movement of 1955. In a short film on his life and work titled Jean‑Paul Jérôme: La couleur, la lumière, la forme, the artist emphasizes the importance of these years spent in relative seclusion, when he abandoned himself to vibrant, complementary colours inspired by the Plasticiens period, as well as Pop art. As his catalogue biography for the exhibition The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montreal, 1955‑1970 states: “Jean‑Paul Jérôme abandoned the Plasticiens aesthetic around 1957 during his period in Paris, which was marked by the increasing influence of lyrical abstraction. At the end of his career, he returned to a complex and highly chromatic geometrical abstraction.”
A painter, illustrator, and sculptor, Jean‑Paul Jérôme studied under Stanley Cosgrove at the École des beaux‑arts de Montréal until 1951. In 1955, he co‑signed the Manifeste des Plasticiens and became a founding member of the movement. After a brief period in Paris, from 1956 to 1958, where he kept company with Hans Hartung, Alberto Giacometti, Martin Barré, Jean Dewasne, and Victor Vasarely, among others, he returned to Canada and accepted a teaching position in studio arts at the very institution that had trained him, eventually leaving his post in 1972 to focus full‑time on his art. Jérôme was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1978.
