JEAN MCEWEN: bleu

Event Description

This Jean McEwen exhibition explores variations on a blue palette in oil paint and watercolour. Some of Jean McEwen’s finest works feature, as their main colour, blue (or bleu; McEwen’s first language was French).

Between 1951 and early 1954 McEwen’s work strongly reflects the influence of Borduas and Riopelle. The very rare 1953 watercolour in this exhibition illustrates McEwen’s facility with the Automatiste style; the line and taches - neat dabs of paint - surrealistically evoke biomorphic and landscape forms. But McEwen’s deployment of these tropes also anticipates the chromatic dialogue which will be presented in his tectonic colour works of the ensuing 44 years (1954-1998).