Marcella Maltais - Artist on Hydra Island Greece
Marcella Maltais was a Canadian painter born in Chicoutimi (1933 - 2018) who lived and worked on Hydra during the late 60's. She was a friend of Leonard Cohen and she kept her home on Hydra until she died in September 2018.
Biography
Born in Chicoutimi in 1933, Marcella Maltais was one of the first painters in Quebec to achieve lasting success, spanning six decades. Her career mainly took place in Paris, on the island of Hydra, Greece, as well as in Quebec where, during her life, she spent very long periods in her workshop of St-Isidore in Beauce. Her works bear witness to a free and inspiring artistic process and can be found in many museums as well as in several large private collections.
Marcella Maltais was educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Quebec, from 1949 to 1954, with Masters Jean-Paul Lemieux and Jean Dallaire.
Her first figurative works were exhibited at the Café de la Paix in Quebec City in 1952-53, and for more than fifty years continued to be exhibited by major venus on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 1956, she became interested in the abstract research of the time, and for the next ten years she expressed herself in this trend, which earned her enormous success in Montreal. But that did not satisfy her. Turning her back on what she felt was "too easy notoriety", she left Quebec for Paris in 1958, where she questioned everything.
After four to five years of "black" work, she discovered Hydra around 1967-68, which she felt was the luminous solution to her quest: she left the abstract for a more abstract figurative style of painting, because she said she was "motivated initially by the unitive light".
Since then, Marcella Maltais never left this path, through, of course, an evolution still alive.
References
- marcellamaltais.com
- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcella_Maltais
- http://www.artnet.com/artists/marcella-maltais/
- https://www.ledevoir.com/culture/arts-visuels/537543/deces-de-la-peintre-marcella-maltais?fbclid=IwAR0qf0J6amLmmnKaGNdUWsL6ebn8PrBMH91Wb8yGgCpAYKz3QEY_B2MPTiQ
- https://vehemes.blogspot.com/2016/11/leonard-cohen-song-of-hellenist.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR00evVDfZbeSb6nLeNp1IvkStiENo_wl_4lZ7QUqHi-4QVudX7aRi4uGUk
