André Fauteux

Education

Fauteux attended Upper Canada College in Toronto as a boy, where Vernon Mould taught him painting. He next studied art at Central Technical School in Toronto, Ontario, principally with Robert Ross and Winston Laurence, in the mid-1960s.

Career

Following this period of study at Central Technical School, he moved to Ibiza, Spain in 1967, where he met other artists, including Graham Coughty and Gordon Rayner. While in Ibiza, he painted and only began sculpture after his return move to Toronto in 1969. His first work was made of wood. Fauteux worked at a Toronto gallery owned by Av Isaacs in the late 1960s. In 1970, he received his first Canada Council for the Arts grant. Fauteux worked with Anthony Caro (York University, 1974–75). He showed with the Sable Castelli Gallery in the Yorkville area for over 25 years. In New York City, he showed with William Edward O’Reilly Gallery. In 1987, André was chosen by Helen Frankenthaler as one of five artists chosen to receive the Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Awards presented at the Guggenheim Museum. Also in 1987, he participated Triangle Barcelona, Casa de la Caridad, Barcelona, where he made a large circular sculpture that is now a Holocaust Memorial in the Parc de la Ciutadella. See the Category: Holocaust memorials in Spain for the sculpture titled: Memorial Camps Nazis Ciutadella: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Holocaust_memorials_in_Spain. Fauteux returned to Spain in 1990 to make sculptures at the Centre D’ART la Rectoria, Sant Pere Villamajor, Catalonia.

Fauteux sculptures are spare in form but intense in clarity of emotive force. Fauteux sculpture deals with itself and not external subjects and is a part of a modernism, which is an international contemporary aesthetic. The spaces within his sculptures suggest a space that one can penetrate visually but is held out of physically. Often there is a rhythmic quality made of repeated elements and over-lapping sections, found in a group of pyramid galvanized sculptures made in 1976 (Triangle no. 1) and in pieces such as Verve 1975, Moro 1977, and Rosalino Roll, 1977, a clean flow between the elements within the sculpture suggest passages in communication with each other, in such work as Blacksmith 1974, Empire 1976, and Fountain of Irony 1987. Fauteux has also used other materials including rubber in a group of works made in Chicago, Illinois in the 1990s; such as La Salle Loop, of gum rubber and brass. Recent sculpture has been colored with multiple layers of polychrome color and iridescent pigments, on top of coated galvanized steel and with some elements which are dipped in chrome and therefore very shiny. His art is currently represented by The Moore Gallery in Toronto, which has had shows of Fauteux's newest boldly colored and shaped paintings.

Major group shows

1975, The Condition of Sculpture, The Hayward Gallery, London and 1977, Eleven Sculptors, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal. In 1982–83 a major retrospective of his sculpture toured Canada's museums; André Fauteux Ten Years” organized and originating at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, which included a published catalog essay by Karen Wilkin.

Selected exhibitions

Selected public collections

Fauteux's art work is held in major public collections across North America and abroad in Spain.

Awards

Books on André Fauteux

Filmography

André Fauteux appeared in the National Film Board film on Jack Bush and spoke about Bush's influence on himself. Title: JACK BUSH (JACK BUSH [FILM]) Canada, Murray Battle, 1979; Produced by Rudy Buttignol, by Cinema Productions. NFB - Collection - Jack Bush