René Derouin is considered one of Quebec’s leading artists in the field of engraving. In 1955, he left his studies at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal to travel to Mexico, where he spent two years becoming acquainted with the country’s great mural-painting tradition and learning about pre-Columbian and Hispanic culture. He gradually began to develop the concept of territoire (“territory”) after moving to Val-David in 1975. He presented Migrations 1 in Mexico in 1992, Migrations 2 at the Musée du Québec and Migrations 3 at the Baie-Saint-Paul exhibition centre in 1994. In June of that same year, he cast sixteen thousand of the ceramic figurines from Migration into the St. Lawrence River. In 1995, he created Fondation Derouin in the aim of organizing themed events, chiefly an annual symposium, that would bring the visual arts into contact with other disciplines and allow artists from both North and South America to meet and exchange ideas. He exhibited Paraíso. La dualité du baroque at the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec in 1998. This monumental mural, later displayed at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, represented a “synthesis” of his multidisciplinary work as a painter, engraver and sculptor. Derouin was awarded the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas in 1999 and received the Prix Orange from Sauvons Montréal in 2004 in recognition of a vast mural he created for the former Chapel of Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf.
SEE:
« Migrations : une sculpture-installation monumentale de René Derouin » by Léo Rosshandler, ESPACE #24, p. 33.
« René Derouin : Du lieu de l’art / de l’art du lieu » by Manon Regimbald, ESPACE #49, p. 27.
« Francine Paul, conservatrice d’une collection reconnue et d’une terre inconnue » by John K. Grande, ESPACE #27, p. 44.
« René Derouin : Fleuve-Mémoires » by Mona Hakim, ESPACE #31, p. 29.
« Sculpture for Everyone » by Serge Fisette, ESPACE #67, p. 5.
