La mêlée

The work La mêlée bears witness to a calligraphic system that illustrates a certain implicit serenity from which can be deduced the existential concerns that were fundamental leitmotifs in Frère Jérôme’s life. La mêlée reflects the immense pleasure the painter took in exploring the rivalry between black and white, establishing a rigorous dialectic between the possibilities of these nuances in the process.

THE ARTIST

Born in 1902 in Charlesbourg, Frère Jérôme lived his entire life in the community of the Religieux de Sainte-Croix, where he died in 1994. A visionary, audacious, compassionate and also marginal painter, his teaching and pictorial practice still know no borders today.

Throughout his life, he had a need to say and create, intermingling the formal and the informal, like a broker of beauty, of recklessness, of the will to last. Brother Jérôme practiced professionally for 70 years and is considered a leading figure in Quebec abstract art.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is presented in collaboration with the Fondation Frère Jérôme.