Armand Vaillancourt

Armand Vaillancourt , born with Black Lake, Quebec the September 3rd 1929, is known like Sculpteur and Activiste.

In 1951, Vaillancourt between with the School of the fine arts of Montreal. He seeks his way, observes the work of the others while wanting to be distinguished. By kneading the clay, he discovers his passion for the sculpture. But the walls, the materials are too narrow for its blooming. It leaves the School and transports art in the street.

Works

1953: the tree of the street Durocher (Montreal)
True public performance, the first of the kind for Armand Vaillancourt. During two years, it will carve, with same the street, this tree, located on the street Durocher, in Montreal. Very discussed, this Sculpture made several curious among the passers by, not knowing how to qualify it. Symbolizing the relationship between art and nature, it remained in place several years lasting, for finally being transported to the National museum of the fine arts of Quebec. This work woke up the conscience of several artists concerned with ecology and is now considered by several as founder of the modern Sculpture Québécois.

1967: I remember (Toronto, draft)
1971: free Quebec! (San Francisco, the United States)
One of its most known sculptures, free Quebec! (locally called Vaillancourt Fountain, or Fountain Vaillancourt) in San Francisco, represents well the bond which carries out Vaillancourt between its political and social convictions and its works. It is acted in fact of an enormous fountain of concrete, of 61 meters length, 43 meters broad and 11 meters in height installed with the Embarcadero plaza, in full heart of the financial district of the city. The night preceding its inauguration, Vaillancourt registered resounding a free Quebec there! in red letters, meaning its indéfectible support with the freedom of the Québécois people and more largely, its support with the emancipation of all the people. Indicator, the following day, that the employees of the city had erased the inscription, it jumped on the sculpture and re-registered several times the sentence there. This work was the object, a few years later, of a very mediatized polemic. Indeed, at the time of a free concert of U2 presented to very the sculpture, Bono, the singer of the group, went up to the top of work and registered there Rock & Roll stops the traffic , in reference to the power of the rock'n'roll. 20.000 people attended the spectacle indeed and blocked part of the neighbouring streets.

Reacting thereafter to this act, the mairess of the city declared whereas she deplored the vandalism of work, that this kind of offense was punishable of a fine and/or imprisonment. Vaillancourt was contacted thereafter to ask whether it supported the gesture, to him which it immediately did while going the following day to the concert of U2 to colized of Oakland, where it wrote Stop the madness on line on the scene, in front of 70.000 spectators. It defended the gesture of Bono, after a critical speech on the injustices of several people, by declaring “the graffiti are an necessary evil. The young people do not have access to the first pages of the newspapers like the politicians”.

1980: Timeless (Chicoutimi)
Vaillancourt created, in 1980, a true white stone field surrounded by " cages" , at the time of the symposium of environmental sculpture, with Chicoutimi. 1.500 tons of rocks were used for this monumental work. The white stone, only material used representing nature, was locked up in metal cages aligned on the rock, symbolizing the structures create by the man for all to frame, all to control.

1983: Justice

1985: El clamor (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
Qualified by Vaillancourt of “symbol of the vital energy of all the oppressed people, the true freedom, that which is inside, that which one cannot imprison”, this seven meters length monumental sculpture, two meters of width and three meters height is done carved stone, surrounded by barbed wires and surmounted with 92 steel hands, symbolizing the fight of the people against repression and the imprisonment. A Dove of one meter and half overhangs the whole. Work was built in Saint-Domingue, in Dominican Republic at the time of the 500e birthday of the arrival of Christophe Colomb.

Honors

1993 - Price Paul-Emile-Borduas.

2004 - Knight of the National order of Quebec.

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