Francine Simonin
Born in 1936.
Died in 2020.
Francine Simonin (1936–2020) was an artist active as a draughtswoman, painter and printmaker, whose work combines a sustained printmaking practice with formats that are sometimes very large.
Between 1958 and 1966, her production focused mainly on woodcut and copper engraving. In printmaking, she often brought together and combined several processes — etching, aquatint and drypoint — and sometimes incorporated collage on the same surface. In terms of supports and media, she worked mainly on paper (acrylic, ink, chalk, pastel); her formats grew to such an extent that she frequently worked on her pieces on the floor, and from 2000 onwards she rediscovered her taste for canvas.
Recurring themes identified in her work include the female body in motion, landscape, and writing or signs, motifs found in both her paintings and prints. According to the gallery and biographical entries consulted, a pronounced graphic sensibility links her approaches to printmaking and painting.
Having discovered Montréal in 1968 through a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, she settled in Montréal in 1971 and worked there thereafter; the Galerie Ligne treize also notes periods of living and working in Évian. Alongside her artistic practice, she taught at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières from 1971 to 1994. Her work led to several public commissions cited in the entries, notably for the Palais de Justice de Longueuil, for pavilions at the Université Laval (Sainte-Foy), and for the Auditorium Stravinsky in Montreux.
Galleries represent her and regularly circulate her work in Canada, while entries concerning its circulation mention the presence of her pieces in various institutional and private collections and art banks.
Reported exhibitions and participations include ARTFEMME'75 at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (1975), an exhibition at the Fondation Gianadda in Martigny (2011), and inclusion in the group exhibition 'Summer Array', organised by the Galerie Oeno in 2019. In 2004, she received the Prix de la Fondation Monique et Robert Parizeau, recognising her contribution to the history of printmaking in Québec. A monograph published in 2014 brings together texts and illustrations devoted to her work.
Her career, marked by the intersection of printmaking and painting and by several decades of teaching, leaves a body of work spanning a range of graphic registers and formats, as presented in the sources consulted.
