Pierre Ayot was born in Montreal in 1943. A graduate of the École des beaux-arts de Montréal, he began teaching there in 1964, then continued his career as a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His work, initially in printmaking, soon spilled over into sculpture, painting, photography, video, sound and visual installations. Strongly inspired by the dynamism of American art and the liberalism of European culture, he has integrated the social concerns and issues of his time into his work. Ayot also questions reality and its representation, and it is often through humor and the confrontation of everyday objects with various elements of high culture that he invites the viewer to reflect on deceptive appearances.
His work, which has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions, is included in most major Canadian public and corporate collections, as well as in a number of foreign collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London. Major exhibitions have been devoted to his work, notably in 1980 at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, in 1992 at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Pierre Ayot et son Museum Circus) and in 2001 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Pierre Ayot: Hors-cadre(s)). In autumn 2016, Pierre Ayot – Regard critique, a six-site event orchestrated by curator Nicolas Mavrikakis, highlighted his multidisciplinary practice and revived his body of work. He died on May 2, 1995, and the Prix Pierre-Ayot, created in his memory in 1996 by the City of Montreal and the AGAC, is awarded annually to an artist in the early stages of his or her career.
