Collections Detail – MAC Montréal

Artist: Charles Daudelin
Title: Composition n° 1
Dimensions and medium: Bronze, 97 × 76.2 × 31 cm
Origin: Gift : the artist
Artwork description: This bronze sculpture by Charles Daudelin was produced at a defining moment in his career. Until the 1960s, Daudelin was known for his figurative works on paper, oil paintings, ceramics, and more artisanal projects such as puppets and figurative paintings. In the early 1960s, his visual vocabulary, more singular and assertive after decades of experimentation, became entirely abstract and idiosyncratic. Composition n° 1 stems from this period, when Daudelin developed an interest in responding to the urban environment and its architecture, which would form one of the cornerstones of his practice. This textured bronze, along with other small bronzes from the same period, allowed Daudelin to experiment with new materials and techniques on a more intimate scale before transforming the same ideas into monumental public art works integrated in architectural sites, such as the Salle Maisonneuve at Place des Arts in 1967, and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in 1969. Composition n° 1 was first carved out of a block of polystyrene with a saw and a soldering iron before being cast in bronze through the lost wax technique. This vertical piece attests to Daudelin’s interest in the play between shadow and light while allowing the negative space to complete the work.

Charles Daudelin