Fernand Toupin

Fernand Toupin (1930, Montreal–2009 Terrebonne) was a Québécois abstract painter best known as a first-generation member of the avant-garde movement known as Les Plasticiens. Like other members of the group, his shaped paintings drew upon the tradition of geometric abstraction, and he cited Mondrian as a forerunner. In 1959, Toupin began working with a more lyrical, though abstract, way of painting. The last decade of his career saw his return to geometric abstraction. Like Jean-Paul Mousseau, Toupin created works which lay outside the standard boundaries of art such as his stage sets for ballets. Beginning with his first early-career retrospectives in 1967 and 1972 organized by the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, Toupin's work was the subject of several gallery and museum exhibitions, both in Canada and abroad. The Musée d'art de Joliette organized a retrospective in 1986 and the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent in 2003, among others. Toupin's work is represented by Galerie Bernard, Montréal and the Lamoureux Ritzenhoff Gallery which organized a retrospective in 2011.