Louis Belzile
Louis Belzile (April 17, 1929 – February 12, 2019) was one of the main figures of geometric abstraction in painting in Quebec and one of the members of the Plasticiens group in Montreal along with Jauran (Rodolphe de Repentigny), 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 1953. On his return to Quebec, he settled in Montreal where he met Jean-Paul Jérôme, Fernand Toupin and Rodolph de  Repentigny (Jauran). They signed the "Manifeste des Plasticiens" in 1955, which read, in part (in translation): "The Plasticians attach themselves […] to plastic facts: tone, texture, colors, shapes, lines, final unity that is the painting, and to the relationships between these elements". 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. In 1956, Belzile became  a founding member of the Association of Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal. In 1958, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Montreal. In 1960-1961, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. He then taught at the Saint-Joseph teachers' college until 1965. From 1965 to 1985, alongside his career as an artist, Belzile had a distinguished career in the civil service, at the Ministry of Education. In 1980, Martin O'Hara published "The Privileged Moment An Interview with Louis Belzile" in the "McGill Journal of Education". In 2005, André Desrochers made the film "L'intuition  intuitionnée" about the work of the Plasticiens. Belzile died on February 12, 2019, the last survivor of the first group of Plasticiens. 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), the Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke and the Musée du Bas Saint-Laurent.