Robert Lapalme

Robert LaPalme was a self-taught artist. The École des beaux-arts de Montréal refused to admit him as a student in 1925 because they felt the young man had very little talent! He was imbued with a fiercely independent spirit and attracted public attention in the early 1930s with his first sketches. They were drawn in a cubic-geometric style, which was considered revolutionary at the time.

From 1940 to 1960, he was the dominant Canadian caricaturist, and was one of very few Canadians to gain international fame in this area. Most major Canadian newspapers published his work during that period. His first caricatures appeared in 1934 in L’Ordre, a newspaper under the direction of Olivar Asselin. From 1935 to 1937, he worked in New York and his drawings appeared in The Nation, in Chicago’s Ringmaster and in Philadelphia’s Public Ledger. Upon his return to Canada, he worked for Le Droit in Ottawa, Le Journal de Québec, L’Action catholique, La Patrie and Le Nouveau Journal. Le Devoir started running his caricatures on its editorial page in 1950.
In 1960, Robert LaPalme steadily reduced his output of caricatures in order to devote more time to the organization of international events. In 1963, he was instrumental in the creation of the International Salon of Caricature, an event that would continue for a quarter of a century and feature artists from more than 60 countries. These venues provided an ideal opportunity for Quebec’s best young artists to show what they could do.
Robert LaPalme, who was born in Montréal in 1908, won countless prestigious awards during his career, including First Prize at the Tokyo International Poster Competition, the most important salon of its kind in the world, in 1965; a diploma from the National Cartoonist of New York and the Palma d’Oro from the Salone Internazionale dell’Umorismo di Bordighera in Italy, in 1972. In 1952, he won the National Newspaper Award for the Best Caricature of the Year.
He was an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Academy of Canada and of the Ordre national du Québec. Lovers of caricature have had the opportunity to admire exhibitions of his work in galleries throughout the world, including New York (1945), Brazil (1947), Rome (1949) and Paris (1950). He also created the large tapestry in the LaPalme Bar in Place des Arts.

Robert LaPalme died in 1997. He was inducted into the Academy of Great Montrealers in the Cultural category in 1992 and was named a Commander of the Ordre de Montréal in 2016.