Albert Gilles

Albert Gilles (1953)

Details of a Church copper door

Chalice commissioned by Pope Pius XII to commemorate the 300 years of the Archdiocese of Montreal in 1942.

Albert Gilles (1895-1979) was a French coppersmith.

Biography

Albert Louis Gilles was born in Paris on August 20th, 1895. Metalworking quickly became a passion of his after introduced to the Repoussé technique by an aunt at age 12. Later, while pursuing a commercial course by day, he took art classes in the evening. He injured his right hand during his service in the First World War, which he recovered the use of by milking cows at a farm in Normandy. After the war, he resumed his artistic activities and would in the 1926 Salon des artistes décorateurs in Paris.

He emigrated to Canada in 1927, landing in Quebec City on February 10. In 1929, he founded the Albert Gilles Studio (Which later was renamed Buivres d'Art Albert Gilles, and Albert Gilles Copper Art Studio). He spent time working in America as well, in Detroit, Hollywood and Los Angeles, as a decorator, metal sculptor and silversmith.  In 1937, he was commissioned to repair gates in Havana's capitol, before returning to Canada.

He started working for the church and established himself in Quebec as a religious artist, where he made Copper Reliefs and Enamel Murals. In 1942, he was internationally recognized when commissioned by Pope Pius XII, to execute the silver chalice offered to the archdiocese of Montreal.

His “Christorama” exhibit is devoted to the life of Jesus Christ. The project started in the 1930s, it took him 15 years to achieve. The idea of the Christorama originated in Detroit in 1932.

Aaron Mendelsohn, of General Motors, commissioned the artist to create an illustrated life of Christ in memory of Mendelsohn's late wife. Mendelsohn himself died when only 40 of the reliefs had been finished, and Gilles decided to finish them and keep them.

Over the years and into the 1960s, he decorated more than thirty places of worship in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario, as well as in the United States and Jamaica. The Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, the cathedrals of Cornwall (On.), Moncton (NB) and Valleyfield (Que.), a few chapels and many parish churches have one or more of his works.  

Albert Gilles died in 1979, and since then, his family has continued his work, creating secular and religious pieces.

Gilles famously once said, "I am not an artist, just an artisan."

Achievements

The American years

Gilles emigrated to the United States in early 1929, settling in Detroit. His work, during this period, was inspired by the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, which he saw in Paris in 1925. He worked for such clients as automotive magnates Charles Fisher and Aaron Mendelsohn of the Fisher Body Company (later General Motors) and K.T. Keller of Chrysler.

In 1933, he moved to California to work for leading film stars like Fredric March, Mae West and Joan and Constance Bennett. He also helped decorate various residences for Sol M. Wurtzel, of the Fox Film Corporation, and for Walt and Roy Oliver Disney, as well as the Los Angeles Times building.

In 1957, two decades after leaving the United States, he made four massive doors in his Château-Richer workshop for the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. The church was designated a historic monument in 2002.

Religious art

In 1937, ten years after first landing in Quebec, Gilles returned, settling there permanently. His copper repoussé reliefs and cloisonné enamel murals were popular additions to the religious art scene of the time. His reputation as a religious artist and artisan was sealed with an exhibition in 1941 of 50 panels showing the life of Christ, followed in 1942 by a Papal commission to design and produce the chalice and paten for the mass celebrating Montreal's 300th anniversary.

Over the years and into the 1960s, he decorated more than thirty churches in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario, as well as in the United States and Jamaica. The Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré basilica, cathedrals in Cornwall, Ontario, Moncton, New Brunswick, and Valleyfield, Quebec, several chapels and numerous parish churches all have one or more of Gilles’ copper, brass or silver repoussé pieces. His relief work also adorns many doors, architectural elements (capitals and columns), church fittings (altars, railings, pulpits, baptismal fonts and tabernacles), and other ceremonial accessories (Paschal candlesticks and sanctuary lamps). In other cases, his reliefs depict scenes representing the fourteen stations of the cross or holy figures, and in yet others they are joined to form murals.