RENÉ MARCIL Original gouache and watercolour on paper- signed and dated /83- 35" x 31"

RENÉ MARCIL Original gouache and watercolour on paper- signed and dated /83.

35" x 31"

Paper itself is approximately 25" x 19"

René Marcil Biography
(1917 - 1993)

René Marcil was a French Canadian painter, draftsman and fashion illustrator. Born in Montreal, Quebec, he moved to New York in 1941, and in 1949, escaping McCarthyism, to Paris and the South of France. From 1960 to 1992 he split his time between London, Paris and a small village near Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Tourettes-sur-Loup, punctuated by short stays in New York and Toronto.

In the mid-1980s, Marcil's art changed again, this time to Neo-Expressionism. He returned to portraying the human body but now he rejected traditional composition and design and favoured the heightened, vivid palette he had used in abstraction but with a rougher handling of materials. He presented his subjects in a manner that communicated a sense of emotion using imaginative imagery and allusions. With his broad repertoire he brought to the style subjects guided by his everyday life. These works are further evidence of the breadth of his skillset.

René Marcil had a lifelong dedication to his art. He maintained an epistolary relationship with his wife, Evelyn for almost 40 years, meeting each other on rare occasions. He died of a heart attack in 1993.

His work is in the permanent public collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (MAD) at the Louvre which features a large collection of works by Dubuffet. In Canada, his paintings are included in the collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and in numerous private collections.

Source: Canadian art historian Joan Murray via Cowley Abbott.