Jean Lefébure
(1930 - 2013)
Canadian painter and sculptor
Jean LeFebure (Lefebvre) was born in Montreal in 1930. He began his studies at the school of architecture without finishing them. At a very young age, he began to frequent the artistic circles of the metropolis and this is how he met the automatists, including Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcelle Ferron and Paul-Émile Borduas.
He learned the trade under the guidance of painters Yves Lasnier, Claude Gauvreau and Paul-Émile Borduas. He will walk artistically in a mainly self-taught way. Jean LeFébure took part in the exhibition entitled Les Rebelles in 1950. This exhibition, which caused a stir at the time, welcomed the works refused by the jury of the Spring Salon of the School of Art of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, including those by Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Marcel Barbeau .
Jean Lefébure left Montreal to settle in Paris in 1952 to give free rein to his creations. He stayed there for more than 10 years, he became a bookseller while exhibiting throughout Europe. It will be part of the exhibitions of the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris in 1954; collective exhibition at the Iris Clert gallery, Paris, 1955; personal exhibition in Cannes, 1961; Arditti Gallery, Paris, 1962; Levi Galleries, Milan, 1962; Semia Huber Gallery, Zurich, Germany, 1962; Spoleto Festival, Italy, 1962. He produced a good number of paintings which he exhibited in Madrid with the help of Camilo Jose Cela, a member of the Royal Society of Spain. He was also taken by his teacher Henri Goetz to the Côte d'Azur to see Picasso and Pignon again.
During his stay, he came across a new fiberglass-based material at the Saclay nuclear research center, to which he binds stone or metal aggregates with epoxy and polyesters. This material added to the bronze filings will then be used on his return to Quebec to create, Solar Sign, a sculpture produced as part of Canada's centennial in 1967 and presented for the first time at the National Gallery of Canada. This sculpture was then acquired by the city of Montreal in 1970 and installed on Île Sainte-Hélène.
He therefore returned to Quebec in 1965 and began a teaching career, first at the School of Architecture at Laval University and then Cégep Saint-Laurent de Montréal as an art teacher, a position he would retain. until his retirement in 1990.