Dusk, Calm, Signals, 1966

Minimalist abstract painting by Yves Gaucher with a solid red background. Short, thin horizontal lines, painted in blue and green, are arranged into three columns near the middle of the piece and appear in stacked pairs except for two green lines nearest to the centre. Thicker green lines appear on the top and bottom edges of the piece.

Yves Gaucher, Dusk, Calm, Signals, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 101.5 x 203 cm, Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal.

Dusk, Calm, Signals is from a group of paintings referred to as the Signals/Silences series, which invariably include one or both terms, denoting either high colour contrasts and emphatic rhythms or more subdued, contemplative colours. In 1966, Gaucher abandoned the diamond shape of the Square Dances series for the rectangle: the paintings in this group are entirely horizontal in orientation.


Gaucher’s explicit use of the diagonal would go underground for the next decade, though implicit oblique vectors crossed and recrossed the paintings executed in between.

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Dusk, Calm, Signals - Art Canada