Serge Tousignant

Born in 1942, Serge Tousignant studied at the Montreal School of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1962, and went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London where he spent a year between 1965-1966. After exploring various mediums such as etching, painting, sculpture and installation, photography became his main preoccupation in the 80s. Tousignant’s work has been showcased in over thirty solo exhibitions since 1964 and has participated in over one hundred group shows in Quebec and in Canada. Among his many exhibitions in Canada and abroad, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa presented a retrospective show entitled Phases in Photography that traveled to different museums in Canada between 1992 and 1996.

His works are part of many public and corporate collections in Canada and abroad, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles Museum of Art (LAMA), the Bridgestone Art Gallery in Tokyo, as well as the Val-de-Marne’s Conseil des arts and Ivry-sur-Seine’s Service des Affaires culturelles in France. Serge Tousignant is present in most of Canada’s major museums: the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), the Mackenzie Art Gallery and Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, as well as the Regina Art Gallery. As one of the founding members of the Véhicule Art artist-run centres, Tousignant played a key role in the burgeoning of Quebec’s art scene, all while teaching at the Université de Montréal’s Visual Arts department from 1975 to 2005. He received the Bridgestone Art Gallery Award at Tokyo’s 5th International Print Biennial of Tokyo, and the Sculpture Award at Perspective 67, the Canadian Centennial Commission Exhibition.