A new exhibition is celebrating the incredible life of renowned Montreal artist, Françoise Sullivan.
Sullivan has been a pioneer in the arts for decades and is known for her ability to switch from one discipline to another, moving between dance, sculpture, performance, photography and painting.
I Let Rhythms Flow at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), celebrates Sullivan’s 100 years of life and includes a selection of paintings Sullivan has created over the past two years, which are a continuation of the abstract monochromatic works she began in the 1980s.
“What becomes very clear is how coherent her work is from start to finish. In her sensitivity, responsiveness to inspiration, movement, presence. Whether it’s through dance, sculpture, mixed-media, performances and paintings,” said says Stéphane Aquin, director of the MMFA.
“There’s an amazing availability of her mind to the world around her, and that’s quite unique.”
The exhibition also features large-scale pastels from the 1990s that were recently found in her archives, as well as an aluminum sculpture that is a large-scale reproduction of a Plexiglas work she produced in 1968.
She told a room full of people on Monday that her inspiration for her recent work was climate change and the environment.
“She really works surrounded by nature, by the trees,” said Aquin. “I think she’s felt these changes. Of course she reads the news and it translates in the mood of some of these paintings.”
Sullivan was a member of The Automatistes, founded by Paul-Émile Borduas. The group’s manifesto, Refus Global, published in 1948, challenged traditional values in Quebec.
In the decades after that, Sullivan has tackled many things.
She has been a dancer, sculptor, photographer, chorographer, and a painter. Her career spans 80 years.
“At 100 years old she made these paintings herself, with no assistant — moved the canvases around,” said Aquin.
“It’s amazing.”