Making Snowshoes, Montagnais Indians

André Charles Biéler was born on October 8, 1896, in Lausanne, Switzerland, to Charles Biéler, director of the Collège Galliard, and Blanche, daughter of historian Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné. The family lived in Paris for twelve years before immigrating to Canada in 1908, settling in Montreal where his father became registrar of Presbyterian College. Biéler studied at Westmount Academy and the Institut Technique de Montreal, intending to pursue architecture. In 1915, he enlisted in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry during World War I and was wounded and seriously gassed.

After his release from the army, Biéler studied at the Lycée Carnot in Paris. He returned to Canada in 1919 and went to Florida to recuperate, where Harry Davis Fluhart gave him art lessons. A veteran's grant allowed him to study at the Art Students League of New York in Woodstock under Charles Rosen and Eugene Speicher. From 1922 to 1926, he spent most of his time in Switzerland, studying under his uncle Ernest Biéler, a painter and muralist, and helped with several frescoes in the town hall of Le Locle in Canton Neuchâtel. He also studied in Paris at the Académie Ranson with Maurice Denis and Paul Sérusier. In 1924, he had his first solo exhibition at the Art Association of Montreal.

Biéler lived on the Île d'Orléans in Quebec from 1927 to 1929, where he painted habitants and met A.Y. Jackson. In 1930, he established a studio in Montreal, earning a living through commercial commissions and teaching. He and John Goodwin Lyman founded the Atelier art school, which operated for a short period. In 1931, Biéler married Jeannette Meunier, a young interior decorator and designer, and became involved in designing theater sets, costumes, furniture, interiors, fabrics, and posters. In 1935, they moved to Saint-Adèle in the Laurentian Mountains.

In 1936, Biéler became a professor of art at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. In 1941, he organized the first conference of Canadian artists, which led to the foundation of the Federation of Canadian Artists, serving as its first president. He taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts during summers in 1940, 1947, 1949, and 1952. In 1957, Biéler provided impetus for the formation of the Canada Council and was the main organizer of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, serving as its first director until 1963. He retired from Queen's University in 1963.

Biéler's work was modernist, initially emphasizing line and form influenced by his uncle's work in stained glass and mosaic, later showing more interest in light and color. He created genre pictures of rural Quebec life, depicting figures working in groups and gathering around churches. His major commissions included a large mural for the Shipshaw plant of the Aluminum Company of Canada (1945-48), a mural for the Veterans' Affairs Building in Ottawa (1955), seventy-five color woodcuts for the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal (1957), and mosaic murals for Chalmers United Church and Frontenac Wall & Tile in Kingston. He held more than twenty-five solo exhibitions in locations including Geneva, Montreal, Kingston, Quebec City, and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. He belonged to the Canadian Group of Painters and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, received the J.W.L. Forster Award from the Ontario Society of Artists in 1957, the Canadian Centennial Medal, an honorary doctorate, and was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1987. André Charles Biéler died in Kingston, Ontario, on December 1, 1989, survived by his wife Jeannette and four children.