“Soleil, Soleil !”

A pioneering artist of great intellectual rigor, Fernand Toupin developed an aesthetic that evolved from pure geometric abstraction (Plasticism) to a textured expressionism. In his early career, his style was characterized by clean, contrasting planes of color arranged on irregularly shaped supports—he was one of the first in Canada to utilize “shaped canvases” to break away from the traditional rectangular frame. In the 1960s, his artistic trajectory took a radical turn: he abandoned strict geometry to explore raw matter, creating relief-paintings where paint mixed with sand or marble dust evoked terrestrial topographies, bark, and minerals.

His artistic philosophy centered on the absolute autonomy of the pictorial space. For Toupin, a painting should not mirror the visible world but possess its own physical and plastic reality. By signing the Plasticien Manifesto in 1955 (alongside Jauran, Belzile, and Jérôme), he opposed the lyrical and unconscious automatism of Borduas, advocating instead for a thoughtful, structured, and orderly art. Even when he transitioned into his more organic, texture-driven period, his philosophy remained anchored in the pursuit of a hidden architectural balance. To Toupin, texture and color were raw forces that the artist had to channel to reveal the intrinsic poetry of matter.