Marcella Maltais was born in Chicoutimi on October 9, 1933, and she died in Ste. Anne-de-Beaupré on September 19, 2018. A student at École des beaux-arts de Québec from 1949 to 1954 with teachers like Jean Paul Lemieux and Jean-Philippe Dallaire among others, she pursued her training in Montréal with the Automatists and Rita Letendre. At first figurative, her artworks became abstract under the influence of painters of this period (Borduas and Riopelle, namely) and remained as such for about ten years. In spite of a huge success in Québec, she left for Paris in 1958 and slowly started to question her style of painting, obsessed by her need of renewal. A few years later, on Hydra Island, in Greece, she finally found what she was looking for: a more abstract figurative painting, flooded with light. Parisian circles and collectors followed her in this evolution but not Québec circles. In her book Notes d'atelier, she wrote: '' Painting is a road, a means of knowledge. Artworks are only the trace, alchemical residues. I would hope that after half of century of darkness, one would appreciate painting for what it is, would look at it in the eyes and speak about it in its language, space and colours. Painting is expressing the world through light.'' For over 50 years, Marcella Maltais has constantly participated in exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic. She lived maintly in Paris but had kept a workshop in Québec City, a place dear to her.