Louis Belzile

Louis Belzile (April 17, 1929 – February 12, 2019) was one of the main figures in geometric abstraction in painting in Quebec and one of the members of the Plasticiens group in Montreal along with Rodolphe de Repentigny (Jauran), Jean-Paul Jérôme and Fernand Toupin.

Career Louis Belzile was born in Rimouski, Quebec. He studied at the Ontario College of Art with Jock Macdonald and Carl Schaefer from 1948 to 1952 and with André Lhote in Paris in 1952–1953.

In the 1950s, he used geometric forms and harmonious tones in his abstract painting to create, as the manifesto said, an equilibrium between form and colour. In his later work, he studied the way light fell on evanescent plastic forms. Much later, he made sculpture such as Les trois âges (1987), which recalls miniature architecture.

Belzile died on February 12, 2019, the last survivor of the first group of Plasticiens. Belzile: ordre et liberté (Retrospective), Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent, Rivière-du-Loup, (Québec) (1996) La question de l'abstraction, MACM (2012) The Plasticiens and Beyond: Montréal 1955–1970, co-produced and circulated by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Varley Art Gallery of Markham (2013), curated by Roald Nasgaard and Michel Martin. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication including texts by the two co-curators and others by Lise Lamarche and Denise Leclerc. Hommage aux Plasticiens, Galerie Simon Blais, 2020

Public collections Many public institutions in Canada have works by Belzile in their collection such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery as well as museums in Quebec like the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the MACM (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal), and the Musée du Bas Saint-Laurent.