Paul Beliveau

Born in Quebec City, Canada, in 1954, Paul Béliveau attained his Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Laval University in 1977. Recognized for his expertise in drawing, engraving and painting he has since then had more than a hundred solo exhibitions across Canada, the United States and Europe. The recipient of numerous prizes in visual arts and of multiple grants from the Canada Council has taken part in several committees and juries as specialist in the visual arts. His works can be found in many public and private collections throughout the country and has to his name some fifteen works of art integrated into architectural sites.
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AVAILABLE WORKS & INVENTORY

Only a curated selection of works is shown online. Our inventory changes frequently, and many important works are not publicly listed.

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VANITAS

 In his Vanitas series, Paul Béliveau transforms the humble book into a powerful symbol of memory, knowledge, and the endurance of culture. Painted with extraordinary precision, each composition presents carefully selected book spines arranged in deliberate dialogue—pairing literature, art, philosophy, history, and music in ways that invite deeper reflection. Borrowing its title from the historic vanitas tradition, the series acknowledges the passage of time and the fragility of human existence, yet Béliveau’s interpretation is ultimately humanistic: rather than emphasizing mortality alone, these works celebrate the transmission of ideas across generations, suggesting that while human life is finite, thought, creativity, and cultural memory can endure. 

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ARTIST STATEMENT

 

Vanitas series is meant to be deeply humanistic. Books are gathered side by side and presented by their spine, allowing the images and titles to speak, thus showing that behind that front, words, sentences and chapters enter into dialogue. Vanitas is about a living culture one is unable to see but rather desire.

« In my painting I like not to randomly accumulate images but rather converge towards an organised assemblage of elements responding to each other and building upon each other. In this work centered around citation, Vanitas (formerly called Les humanités and then Les rencontres) is a logical result of my relation with objects, the books more specifically, which is a clear demonstration of human knowledge, of thought transference which survives mankind. I like to use painted books as a strategy against loss, eventhough worn books, metaphorically, evoque the passage of time and reveal one's own finiteness. »

"…In Paul Béliveau's paintings, the play of juxtaposition is not the result of a random accumulation of images. Rather, it converges towards an idea of structure or of system, an organised assemblage of elements responding to each other and building upon each other… The artist, it should be noted, has always been fascinated by architecture, by the way machines work and by industrial structures, which he compares, in fact, to living organisms…

…Paul Béliveau's works do not represent terminal points. On the contrary, they reveal themselves to be outlines, sketches, creations which are constantly evolving…The meanings conferred on the images reproduced by the artist are therefore always relative…The artist's particular approach accentuates the phenomenological character of an aesthetics which reflects explicitly the contingent nature of existence…It is in this formal and conceptual coherence that the specificity of Paul Béliveau's work resides. His paintings, which live only through the processes of creation or of apprehension, invite us to transcend perceptible reality by directing our gaze towards the continuity of things, towards something that--paradoxically--seems to withstand the action of time and which could perhaps be called "humanity." 1

1 Extract from The Theatre of Affinities or How to Transcend Appearances by Dany Quine
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Video

Video of "Vanitas 17.12.06 (Modern Art)" in our Village Court Gallery.

 

 

Biography

Born in Quebec City, Canada, in 1954, Paul Béliveau attained his Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Laval University in 1977. Recognized for his expertise in drawing, engraving and painting he has since then had more than a hundred solo exhibitions across Canada, the United States and Europe. The recipient of numerous prizes in visual arts and of multiple grants from the Canada Council has taken part in several committees and juries as specialist in the visual arts. His works can be found in many public and private collections throughout the country and has to his name some fifteen works of art integrated into architectural sites.