Le Sauteur, Claude

1 product

Request for information

Claude Le Sauteur, a great painter of modernity

A great Canadian master, painter Claude Le Sauteur, ARC (Royal Canadian Academy of Arts) was born in Rivière Pentecôte, Quebec in 1926 (died 2007). He studied at the École des beaux-arts de Québec. A student of Jean-Paul Lemieux and Jean-Philippe Dallaire, Claude Le Sauteur's works are solid, multifaceted compositions that intertwine sky, people, forests, shoulder curves and mountains. Le Sauteur used different techniques such as oil on canvas, oil pastel and charcoal on paper. He also worked in engraving, illustrated books and published serigraphs and lithographs. Claude Le Sauteur left his mark on Quebec's visual arts with the dynamism and rhythm of his paintings, which never cease to amaze.

"Figurative painting has experienced, from the second half of the twentieth century, if not a crisis, then profound re-examinations. Indeed, under the pressure of abstraction, it had to go beyond the theme of genre painting and find its place in modernity... And among the figurative painters of this period who succeeded in doing so, Claude LeSauteur is certainly one of those who distinguished themselves the most.

Rich compositions

Modern while remaining faithful to the pictorial tradition, Claude Le Sauteur's painting is characterized by its flat tints applied in successive layers as well as by its aesthetic universe where color plays a key role. Methodical, his art is constructed with rigor, both in terms of structure and harmonies. His work is in the continuity of that of Jean-Philippe Dallaire, on the one hand, and of Jean Paul Lemieux, on the other hand, for its solemn side. » Robert Bernier.

A Quebec painter, Claude Le Sauteur has participated in numerous exhibitions in Quebec and Ontario. Several articles in various newspapers and magazines have been devoted to him. He is firmly present in several of the major art galleries across Canada and his works are part of many public and private collections.

ADDITIONAL ARTICLE(S):

Claude Le Sauteur, ARC (1926)

Of all the artists associated with traditional painting, Claude Le Sauteur is undoubtedly the most modern. Neither the style of his works nor the themes he addresses in his paintings have any direct relationship with artists such as Francesco Iacurto, Léo Ayotte or Littorio Del Signore. Treating his subjects in a much more stylized way, he does not hesitate to reorganize reality in a fundamentally different order, and above all, he advocates an aestheticism detached from the representation of physical reality. The modern dimension of his approach lies in the deformation of his characters, in the stylization of the landscape and in the bold use he makes of color. This way of doing things is reminiscent of the works of Jean Dallaire, who was also his teacher at the École des Beaux-arts de Québec. Le Sauteur nonetheless remains eminently personal in his approach. He has clearly succeeded in creating a language that is his own.

Le Sauteur's modernity is nevertheless situated within tradition, since the importance of aesthetics and chromatic harmonies is part of the modern tradition. What is more, the artist stylizes his space by drawing heavily on Cubism, while taking care to use geometric construction to serve aesthetic values ​​and not, like the Cubist painters, to create a new codification of the surface by the deconstruction-reconstruction of the subject. This is why the modernity that characterizes his work overlaps tradition. Le Sauteur does not question the pictorial bases, he does not seek in any way to question the presence of the subject and the narrative content, nor the placement of the elements in the rectangle of the canvas. The artist's primary quality is therefore neither audacity nor novelty. However, and this is his greatest strength, he pushes the aesthetic values ​​of the work to their paroxysm as few artists have managed to do. Whether or not one is a supporter of the pictorial tradition, it must be admitted that Le Sauteur possesses, in terms of his profession, all the attributes of a great painter.
For the quality of his work, Claude Le Sauteur occupies a privileged place in our painting. His paintings, especially from the beginning of the 1990s, are a vibrant homage to a plastic maturity that is always expressed with uncommon know-how.

Source: Robert Bernier, Painting in Quebec since the 1960s, Les Éditions de l'Homme, 2002, Le Sauteur Claude Le Sauteur, ARC (1926), pages 298-299.

TO LEARN MORE: