After attending the École d’Arts et Métiers de Valleyfield, Maurice Lemieux (1931–94) produced his first sculptures in the 1950s. He participated in the Madrid Biennale in 1957 and created an imposing wall sculpture for the Séminaire Saint-Jean-Iberville (today CÉGEP Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu) in 1961. Between 1964 and 1971, he lived in Los Angeles, where he developed a new material that he called “aluminum foam.” In the early 1980s, he created Calcite, a permanent artwork for the De la Savane Métro station in Montréal.
Artwork description
Initially situated at Place Victor-Bourgeau, the artwork was moved to Île Notre-Dame, then to the Montréal Museum of Fine Art, and finally to its current site, the Laurier housing project.
The artwork, which can be seen from the entrance to the Laurier Métro station on Boulevard Saint-Joseph, is composed of a number of bent steel elements that form an abstract composition. The elements are assembled perpendicularly. The artwork sits on a cylindrical concrete base with a grooved exterior face.