MONTRÉAL, CANADA.-They rarely come out of their storeroom. They are fragile and, above all, sensitive to light. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal presents Drawings from the Collection, a brand-new exhibition in the galleries devoted to the permanent collection through January 8, 2006.

Works on paper make up no less than half of the 7,000 works in the museum’s collection. This exhibition, which contains 130 pieces by a hundred or so artists, forcefully reasserts the current interest and expressive power of this literally ageless medium. The different groupings highlight the contribution made by leading figures in the history of contemporary art and offer an interpretation of the major genres in pictorial tradition: still life, portrait, landscape, genre painting. Visitors may observe the surrealist game of cadavres exquis played by Alfred Pellan, Jean Benoît, Mimi Parent and Jean Léonard; landscapes by John Lyman; and the energetic gestural language of Jean-Paul Riopelle and Fernand Leduc, along with the more structural approach of Jauran, Guido Molinari and Claude Tousignant. Conceptual art, American minimalism and hybridity of practices will also be present. Drawings by Mel Bochner, Melvin Charney, Paterson Ewen, Betty Goodwin, Roland Poulin, Rober Racine, Michael Snow and Irene F. Whittome, to name only a few, will be on display.

According to Josée Bélisle, the curator in charge of the Collection, “whether graphic, formal or critical, the works in the exhibition all arise out of genuine aesthetic quests.”