22 – 30 September 2019
Galerie de l’UQAM is proud to present at La Macina di San Cresci, the exhibition by this great Montréal-based artist’s

 bringing together works inspired by this numerous trips to Italy, where she met several important figures in the art world.
Since the 1940s, Françoise Sullivan has created a vibrant and voluminous oeuvre of remarkable versatility and constantly renewed inventiveness. Inspired by the great European and Native North American mythological traditions, passionate about art and poetry, and influenced by the time she spent in New York, Italy, Ireland and Greece, Sullivan has, in her boundless curiosity, never stopped experimenting with form and colour, gesture and movement, figuration and abstraction, not only in sculpture, performance, dance and photography, but also most decisively in painting.
The exhibition and reunion with Gianfranco Sanguinetti
During the 1970s, Françoise Sullivan visited Italy on multiple occasions to immerse herself in the artistic movements being developed around Arte Povera. In Rome, she met several leading figures in the art world such as Jannis Kounellis, Mario Diacono, Emilio Prini, Germano Celant and Graziella Lonardi. Particularly in the summer of 1972, she stayed in Tuscany with her sons, where she regularly met with Gianfranco Sanguinetti, a revolutionary theorist and member of the italian Situationist International branch. Alongside him and on several occasions, she met Guy Debord, founder of the Situationist movement and author of The Society of the Spectacle. In Françoise Sullivan. Works from Italy, Sullivan once more visits the sites where these encounters took place, a lesser-known period of the artist’s extensive career. Here, she showcases works either created in Tuscany and Rome, or inspired by these moments that embody a true turning point and gave impetus to her artistic vision.
An abundant production of performances, choreographies, writings, photographs and paintings marks the artist’s career and has earned Françoise Sullivan a place in the pantheon of Canada’s greatest artists. Sullivan’s trajectories, so radiant, enlighten both our recent history and the present moment. She who still goes to work in her studio every day and continues to think (and think of herself) in and through art, invites us to engage in the vital relationship between the work of art, memory and the world around us. September 22 and 23 will furthermore mark the public reunion between Sullivan and famous author Gianfranco Sanguinetti.

Download the booklet : Francoise Sullivan. Works from Italy