Louis-Pierre Bougie

Louis-Pierre Bougie (16 August 1946 – 10 January 2021) was a Canadian painter and printmaker specialized in engraving and etching.

He developed his knowledge of intaglio techniques at Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut in Paris, where he worked for fifteen years, and through travel and study in France, Portugal, Poland, Ireland, Finland, and New York.

His work is regularly shown in Canadian, American, and European galleries, and is represented in major public and private collections, notably in Québec and New York.

Bougie was considered Québec's foremost engraver for the depth and consistency of his work.

He died from pneumonia.

After an introduction to printmaking at École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, where he attended classes with Angèle Beaudry, Louis-Pierre Bougie studied in Paris, notably at Lacourière-Frélaut (1979–1993), Atelier Rene Tazé, and Atelier Champfleury, and in Vancouver and Montreal.

Additional training in Strasbourg (1979–1982), Kraków (1980), Helsinki (2003), and Buenos Aires (2006) introduced him to a compagnonnage-like approach to the transmission of printmaking skills.

Louis-Pierre Bougie produced a considerable body of engraved and painted works that applied traditional techniques such as burin, aquatint, and chine collé to contemporary printmaking.

An heir to Goya, Blake, and Rops, he had developed an original monotype technique that combined engraving with live figure drawing in a reversal of traditional processes: the paper is first drawn with pierre noir and reworked with acrylic before receiving a print from a copper plate marked with spit-bite and drypoint.

The finished print captures all elements with exceptional transparency, bringing its subject to light in the true sense of illumination.

In Bougie's work, engraving was a process that both opened and sealed spaces.

Desire and imagination inhabited matter in unexpected ways, and appearance was literally cast in a different light (through highlights and illumination), giving us back a bit of ourselves.

In the early 1980s, while also conducting residencies at major printmaking studios abroad (including Paris and Strasbourg), Bougie joined forces with Catherine Farish, Pierre-Léon Tétreault, Kittie Bruneau, and other print-based artists to found Atelier Circulaire.

Throughout his career, he promoted the work of Quebec printmakers both locally and outside Canada.

He also collaborated closely with writers and poets.

In 1983, the poets Gaston Miron and Michael La Chance together signed a telegram to Bougie:

As an engraver and etcher of international renown, he has brought greater visibility to Québec printmaking and has been pivotal in inviting printmakers from abroad to take part in major collaborations with Québec, including artist's books, residencies, and exchanges between Québec and other countries.

He has also helped foster talent in Québec, both through his work with artists at Atelier Circulaire and as the organizer and curator of numerous exhibitions.

Bougie's work benefited from the support of major curators such as Léo Rosshandler, Bernard Lévy, Céline Mayrand, Gilles Daigneault, Claude Morissette, and Anne-Marie Ninacs.

A significant part of Louis-Pierre Bougie's printed oeuvre involved a dialogue with poetry in the form of collaborative exhibitions and, above all, artist's books that brought together the artistry of typographers, printmakers, poets, and bookbinders.

Bougie created books with many poets, among them Gaston Miron, Paul Chamberland, Geneviève Letarte, Jérôme Élie, Michel Butor, Michel van Schendel, François-Xavier Marange, Paule Marier, and Michaël La Chance.

Working closely with the authors, he contributed a distinctive sensibility that was both rough and sensitive, abrasive and idyllic.

His artist's books were featured in the following exhibitions: