Odalisque, or The Sphinx

Charles Daudelin exhibited with Montreal’s Contemporary Arts Society at the Dominion Gallery in 1943, 1944 and 1946, at Eaton’s in Toronto in 1945 and at the show later remounted for the Art Association of Montreal (now the MMFA) in 1946. He was one of the cohort of francophone students whose work was first shown in the Society’s young artist category, and then those – in particular Borduas’ students at the École du meuble – who asserted themselves and changed the very makeup of the group in the face of mostly modernist, figurative conceptions of art. Daudelin painted Odalisque, or The Sphinx in Paris in the spring of 1948, shortly after he had signed the Prisme d’Yeux manifesto. John Lyman exhibited Rose at that same time at the Art Association of Montreal’s 65th Spring Exhibition.