Jacques Hurtubise

Born in Montreal 1939. Jacques Hurtubise studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts there under Albert Dumouchel, Jacques de Tonnancour and Jean Simard. In 1958 he won a prize at the Montreal Spring Exhibition, and in 1960 the Max Beckman scholarship to study in New York City. He held his first one man show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1961 and subsequently held one man shows at Galerie Denyse Delrue, Montreal (1962, 1963); Galerie du Siècle, Montreal (1964, 1965, 1966); Galerie Nova et Vetera, Montreal (1965); East Hampton Gallery, New York City (1966, 1967); Travelling Exhibition, Eastern Canada Art Circuit (1966); Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College (1967) and at The Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, 1967. A non-objective painter his early abstract expressionistic paintings were noted by the Montreal Gazette1 in 1961 as follows, “Youthful experimentation and even bravado . . . brilliantly colorful and expansive but not overly sensitive excursions into painting textures and collages.” Kay Kritzwiser2 during his joint exhibition with Marcel Barbeau in 1965 noted, “Hurtubise is more inclined to let his work read as landscape than as optical experiments. He uses colors in the same big areas but less impersonally. He places a soft mauve circle on black, with a thin white high­light, and the effect is somehow feminine. He makes rough black circles loom out of black background separated only by a tiny square of pale green.” In 1965 he won first prize in the Province of Quebec competition and by 1966 he had attracted attention in New York City during his solo showing at the East Hampton Gallery whose exhibition sheet carried the following note on his work, “His hard-edge paint­ings bear no resemblance to the well-known Canadians in this field, such as Barbeau, Molinari, or Tousignant. They are figure-ground, 2-color abstractions. The jagged, all-over forms set up powerful vibrations that have an impact of shock.” Most of the canvases so described were quite large, measuring 46 x 60 inches and the smallest 21 x 48 inches. His work continues to undergo change and was last reported working with optical art forms. Hurtubise has participated in many group shows including the Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil (1965) (1967) and the Fifth, Sixth, Biennials of Canadian Art. He is represented in the following collections, Quebec Provincial Museum; Sir George Williams University, Montreal; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal; Saskatoon Art Center, Sask.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; External Affairs Department of Canada; Quebec Department of Education; Pirelli International Limited; Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A.; Massa­chusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass., U.S.A.; Vancouver Art Gallery, Van., B.C.; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Tor., Ont.; The Toronto Dominion Bank, Tor.; University of Alberta; Canada Council, Ottawa; University of Ottawa; Memorial University of Newfoundland; Peter Stuyvesant Art Foundation, Amsterdam, Nether­lands. He was resident artist for Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, U.S.A., 1967. Died 2014 at Cape Breton.

Bio courtesy of Colin S. MacDonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, NGC