Denise

Jacques Hurtubise showed great interest in the American artists and art trends he encountered during his stay in New York in the early 1960s, but he distanced himself decisively from such influences in the years that followed. Instead, he set himself on a quest to discover new ways of combining materials that could transcend perception. The blot, or splash, which he explored in every possible permutation, would become his signature subject. Hurtubise reinterpreted the abstract expressionist gesture in an all-over, hard-edge style of painting that conditioned and deconstructed both line and plane, like a series of freeze-frame images. For example, in Denise (1968), the repeating pattern is regular yet asymmetric, creating a dynamic, illusionistic space, a total presence. Of a similar painting, Nicotine, painted a year earlier, François-Marc Gagnon states: “Each interruption of the cells—the edges and the diagonal—is an axis for the symmetry of a vibrating form, of a zigzagging contour. These forms are filled with flatly applied paint. The colours, at the limits of the visible, were among Hurtubise’s favourites: yellow, flesh-pink, chartreuse green, and cyan.” (Translation ours) After 1965, the artist titled many of his works after women’s names, adding a sibylline touch to his personal mythology. (A. L.)