The Art in Focus: Espace Rouge Vert by Guido Molinari

Espace Rouge Vert, 1963; Painting; acrylic on canvas; Guido Molinari, O.C., RCA: Born Montréal, Quebec, 1933, Died Montréal, Quebec, 2004; University of Alberta Museums; University of Alberta Museums Art Collection; 1972.4

The use of bold colours and vertical bars have defined abstract painter Guido Molinari’s artistic career. Largely self-taught, the Montréal born artist strove to explore the relationship between colours and shapes in his art, to create pictorial spaces that were “created by the spectator's perception of the shifting and mixing of the colours.”¹ Celebrated in his lifetime for his contributions to abstract art in Canada (particularly in Québec), Molinari’s work challenged the material and conceptual conventions of painting during the 1960s. 

Espace Rouge Vert (translated to ‘red green space’) pairs the complementary colours red and green together, along with two bands of blue which pauses to the intensity of the painted canvas. The result of these colour combinations create an illusion of movement, and for some, may also present difficulties in viewing the canvas for any period of time. For Molinari, his paintings primarily worked with what he saw as ‘micro-time.’ In other words, Molinari argues, “what you see is for a very short time, and when you are seeing something, you have to fill it with some kind of "’why?’”² Through his work, he also asks the viewer to have their own free associations to the painting and contemplate how colours may relate to each other.³ 

Throughout his career, Molinari championed non-figurative art and was inspired by artists such as Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Piet Mondrain - all leading figures (and predominantly male) in the field of Abstract art during the mid-twentieth century. Their work opened the conversation on experimentation and on what contemporary paintings should and could mean. As art historian Dennis Reid writes that the longer one looks at Molinari’s paintings, they reveal instability of colours when placed next to each other - creating a constant restructuring of the canvas.⁴

Molinari was a key member of the 1960s avante-garde Nouveaux Plasticiens movement⁵ and taught at Concordia University from 1970 until 2004, which allowed him “‘to work free from the dictates and voracious appetite of the art market.’”⁶ For his commitment to painting, but also to organising, Molinari was awarded the Paul-Émile Borduas Prize by the Québec government in 1980. His work can be found nationally and internationally, most notably in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art (NY), and in his namesake gallery, the Guido Molinari Foundation in Montréal.

¹ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/guido-molinari 

² Cohen AA, Winkler D, Zavaglia N. Colour of Memory : Conversations with Guido Molinari. CinéFête; 2005.

³ Ibid

⁴ Reid, Dennis, A Concise History of Canadian Painting. Third Edition. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press, 298.

⁵ The Plasticiens and then the Nouveaux Plasticiens ultimately grew out of the Automatiste movement, which was a rejection of the religious conservatism of painting in Quebec during the 1950s-1960s. The Plasticiens sought to “return to a more controlled and ordered style of painting,” whereas the Nouveaux Plastiens focused on more hard-edge abstract works. See: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/les-plasticiens 

⁶ https://www.concordia.ca/content/shared/en/profiles/offices/advancement/notable-concordians/guido-molinari.html

This web story is part of the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection Spotlight Series, a collection of web stories aimed to share works of art from the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection with the world. These stories connect works of art in the Collection to important matters on our campus and in our community.