Jean-Phillipe Dallaire

Canadian, 1916–1965

Wo Ist Ein Zigarrengeschaft?, 1954

oil on canvas

80.8 x 63.6 cm

Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John A. MacAulay, Q.C.

G-78-93

Categories:

Painting, Canadian Modern (1910-1979)

The oddly titled Wo Ist Ein Zigarrengeschaft? (Where is the cigar shop?), reveals something of the direct and spontaneous way the Quebec-born Jean-Philippe Dallaire approached painting. Influenced by the French artist Jean Dubuffet, Surrealism, and by children’s art, he was himself largely self-taught as an artist. At the outbreak of World War II, Dallaire was living and painting in France, where he had become a colleague of fellow Quebecois artist Alfred Pellan. He was a prisoner of war in German-occupied France, returning to Canada only in 1946. Dallaire’s subject is at once merry and macabre, humanoid and machine-like, and the painting itself blurs the line between figuration and abstraction.