Paul-Émile Borduas
Composition 44
Paul-Émile Borduas
Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, 1905 – Paris 1960
Composition 44
1959
Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
In 2005, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' Association of Volunteer Guides, the Museum dedicated this work to all Association members as a token of its gratitude., inv. 1994.4
Quebec and Canadian Art
This magnificent painting is a stunningly original example of a composition in the shape of a cross. The horizontal bar seems to traverse the canvas from left to right, stopping before it reaches the edge. The emphatic green upright starts near the bottom and ends just above the black arc of the horizontal bar. This, at least, is the illusion created by these two planes, for they were actually painted in the opposite direction.
In 1959, Borduas viewed painting as a form of writing. The rectangle of the canvas was a blank page, and the painted elements were signs. The white is therefore the void, metaphysical nothingness – one of the central themes of Asian philosophy. The semantic meaning of the painting is concentrated in the painted sign. Here, a sort of atheistic cross asserts the authority of the painter's gesture, proclaiming the triumph of mind over matter.
© Estate of Paul-Émile Borduas / SOCAN (2022)
