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Marcella Maltais was born in Chicoutimi, Canada, In 1933. After a few years in Riviere-du-Loup, the family settled in Quebec City. Starting in 1946, while in secondary school, she attended the Saturday children class at the Quebec school of Fine Arts.

In 1949, after completing grade 12, she worked daytime in professionals’ offices and attended night classes and workshops at the Quebec school of Fine Arts. At that time, Jean-Paul Lemieux and Jean Dallaire were professors.  
During summertime holidays, with her friends, François Soucy, Claude Picher and Edmund Alleyn, she put down her easel in the region of Charlevoix and at the Ile d’Orleans, in the province of Quebec.  

In March 1955, for the first time, she exhibited her work in the hall of the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City.

  

       «What a great chance for me that I had two master painters in Jean-Paul Lemieux and 

         Jean Dallaire. These years (1950 to 1954) were determinant in my studies. I discovered 

         Cézanne, the impressionism, Vuillard, Derain, the cubism. (... ) My first painting showed the 

         streets of Quebec and the landscapes of Les Éboulements.   Afterword, around 1954-1955, 

         my painting became more or less expressionist. I was influenced by the modernizing 

         academism ». 

       (Translated from Michel Camus, Interview with Marcella Maltais, Obliques,

         no 16-17, Borderie Editions, Nyons, France, 1978).

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ABSTRACT ART (1956-1967):  

In 1955, Marcella Maltais left Quebec City for Montreal. She joined to the «automatists» painters’ group such as Guido Molinari, Claude Tousignant, Marcelle Ferron and Rita Letendre. Her painting evolved towards the abstract. She exhibited her palette knife oil paintings in several Montreal galleries as well as in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The art critics compared her pictorial research as the one accomplished by Borduas and Riopelle in addition to emphasize her strength of expression and her originality.    

In 1958, Maltais realized her dream by settling down in Paris. She met Paul-Emile Borduas while he was living in her neighborhood, and many other artists such as: Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alberto Giacometti, Samuel Becket, Yves Klein, etc. Not having a workshop, she devoted her work mainly in small drawings and collages.      

        «The year 1956 was the breakup. I burned everything that I adored: Vermeer, Vuillard, 

         painting  from the past era. All my energy joined to burst into my new nonfigurative style. 

         That was the only way possible (…)  I painted and exhibited prolifically while receiving the 

         best critics (…) At the age of 25 years, I was a mostly recognized painter! (...) If I continued 

         my career with the same abstract strength, I would quickly reach in Montreal my summit, 

         a false summit: one kind of spiritual leader, an official painter showered with bursaries 

         and honors». 

        (Translated from Michel Camus, Entretien with Marcella Maltais, Obliques,

         no 16-17, Borderie Editions, Nyons, France, 1978).   

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New painting) Luminous figurative art (1968-2018):

 In 1960, in her first trip to Greece, she discovered the island of Hydra. The artist was dazzled by the Greek light. She bought an old house falling into ruins. She restored it gradually in order to make a workshop. From then on, she stayed there many months each year. Her paintings lightened but the abstraction research led her to a wall. She had explored this means of expression and now she was at an impasse pictorial and existential. 

 In Hydra during the summer of 1968, looking at the scenery through her window, she mechanically took her brushes and painted the light on the landscape: it was a revelation. She rediscovered liking to paint, and now she was back to the figurative painting with the importance of the light as she done during the seventies. 

        " I reached the limits in abstract painting. I had a feeling that the painting can be something 

         else: an exceptional global experience. I was searching in a mixed-up state a

         superior dimension (…) For endless months, I destroyed every painting that I produced 

         until the day that I was in Hydra. I got the idea to paint the landscape from the view of 

         the  window. I did not understand what happened, but I followed my inspiration. I had 

         the impression to be a painter who SEES for the first time my life. I found what I searched

         vaguely ".

        (Translated from Marcella Maltais, Workshop notes, Beffroi Editions, 1991)

THE SEVENTIES

During the seventies, living in Greece many months per year, her work was affected by introducing the light as a focal point in her new style of painting. It is in Hydra, that Marcella went back to figurative style.

In 1972, she visited her brother Michel who lived in an old house in St-Isidore de Beauce, in the province of Quebec. She was taken with the house and bought it for a reduced price. From then on, she shared her life between three countries and three lights: France, Greece and Quebec.
 

 Marcella expressed her revelation through a following poem:

 
        The Hydra Rock broke my heart. I tided myself to it, resistant to the torture of thirst, 

hunger  calling for liberation by death. 

          I listened to the infernal hammering of all the stones, echoing into infinity in my creasy head. 

          I open my eyes to the implacable sun which blinded them, I defied the fire from the sky,

I stole it. 

          I stole the blue from the sky, the blue from the sea, I spread out my burning over all the roofs,

 all the rocks, all the land. 

         And my view is purified.  My view is triumphant. 

         This morning, I listen to the silence and the limpid light cross my eyes washed by rain

         (May 1973)

        (Translated from Marcella Maltais, Workshop Notes, Beffroi Editions, 1991)