Madeleine Arbour, co-signatory of the Refus global manifesto, dies at 101

Pioneer of design and visual arts in Quebec, co-signer of the manifesto Overall refusalMadeleine Arbor died on December 10, her family announced. She was 101 years old.

She said that to live without art is to live without food. Madeleine Arbor enjoyed it all her life and brought it to Quebec, starting with little ones.

Old children will remember his DIY columns on - television in the 1950s and 1960s.

Surrounded by kids wanting to do battle with their paintbrushes, she builds wonderful worlds with spools of thread, cardboard, pipe cleaners and a few pots of gouache.

His career on television continued for around twenty years, notably on the show Woman of todaywhere she talks about decoration and design, in the 1970s.

Born in 1923 in Estrie, Madeleine Arbor was naturally interested in the arts.

A window dresser at Birks, her first job, she creates decorations in the windows where passers-by linger. She is 16 years old.

Two years later, she knocked on the door of Paul-Émile Borduas, in Saint-Hilaire, and asked him to see her paintings. She leaves the workshop fascinated.

I had never seen anything as beautiful as Borduas’ gouaches.

Madeleine Arbor frequents the evenings organized by the painter at his studio, and it is there that soon takes shape Overall refusal.

She is upset when she hears the painter reading the manifesto which rejects the values ​​of the time, in 1948, and the immobility of Quebec society.

Rallying this cry for freedom, she signed the manifesto with her partner, the painter Pierre Gauvreau, and a dozen others, including Jean-Paul Riopelle, who remained a great friend until his death in 2002.

Murals, decors, painting, design

In 1965, Madeleine Arbor opened her huge workshop on rue Saint-Paul, in Old Montreal.

She will create sets for the theater, murals, paintings and will stop at interior design.

The artist has several major public and private achievements, including the interior design of trains for VIA Rail’s transcontinental services, as well as that of Air Canada’s fleet of aircraft.

Madeleine Arbor taught, from 1962 to 1982, at the Institute of Applied Arts of Montreal and at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal, where a room bears her name.

She was the first woman to chair the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

Honors

She received the Order of Canada and was made a Knight of the Order of Quebec in 1999. She was named to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2001, and the Montreal Design Institute awarded her the Sam-Lapointe prize for his entire body of work.

The Musée des beaux-arts de Québec presented a solo exhibition of his work in 2000.

The autodidact received an honorary doctorate from UQAM in 2012.