Jean-Paul Mousseau

Jean-Paul Mousseau (January 1, 1927 – February 7, 1991) was a Quebec artist. He was a student of Paul-Émile Borduas, a member of the Automatist group and a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal. Career Jean-Paul Mousseau was born in Montreal and studied painting there at the College Notre-Dame at the age of thirteen, Interior Decoration at the École du Meuble (1945-1946); and painting with Paul-Émile Borduas (1946-1951). He first exhibited his work in 1944, after joining the Contemporary Art Society and as a member of the Automatistes, in the first Automatist exhibition in 1946. In 1948, he was one of the signatories of the Refus global manifesto. In 1953 he was an exhibitor in Les Automatistes at the Place des Arts, Montreal, and in 1955 his painting La Marseillaise won first prize in the Winnipeg Art Show (it was one of two first prizes). By 1955, Mousseau was exhibiting work similar in aims to Les Plasticiens, a group of artists who had broken away from Les Automatistes to achieve effects through tone, texture, form and line in highly ordered paintings characteristic of the de Stijl group. He exhibited this work in "Espace 55" at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1955. In 1956, he was one of the founders of the Non-Figurative Artists Association of Montreal. In 1957, he began exploring new materials such as coloured resin and fibreglass. At the end of the 1950s, he was one of the first Quebec artists who saw the necessity of integrating art into the urban environment. His most important contributions are his numerous murals and other collaborations with architects, such as his mural (Lumière et mouvement) in the Hydro-Québec building in Montreal for which he won first prize in a competition in 1961. He also designed discotheques. In 1963, 1967 and again in 1997, retrospectives of his work were held (in 1997 curated by Pierre Landry for the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal with an extensive chronology). He participated in many group shows nationally and internationally including the First Biennial of Canadian Painting (1955); the exhibition of Canadian art at the Canadian Pavilion, Brussels International Exposition, Belgium (1958); as a guest exhibitor of Painters 11 (1958), and in many others. He also designed costumes, posters, scenery and lighting for many important productions of the theatre.