Source: National Archives & Historic Records of Canada
Arts & Music • Historical Archive • 🇨🇦 Canada • 0 views

Paul-Émile Borduas 🇨🇦

Paul-Émile Borduas (Known as "Leader of the Automatistes")
Abstract Painter, Leader of Les Automatistes, Author of the Refus Global Manifesto
Born Nov 01, 1905 🇨🇦 Saint-Hilaire (Quebec), Canada
Passed Away Feb 22, 1960 Paris, France
Lifespan 54 years old
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"Make way for magic! Make way for objective mysteries! Make way for love! Make way for needs!"

Archival Overview

Revolutionary abstract painter who founded the Automatiste movement and drafted the 1948 Refus Global manifesto, which shattered Catholic authoritarianism in Quebec and triggered the Quiet Revolution.

Biographical Record

Apprenticing under church decorator Ozias Leduc, Borduas studied in Paris before teaching at the École du meuble in Montreal. Embracing surrealist automatism, he produced bold, visceral non-figurative paintings of floating color matter that rejected traditional representation.

In August 1948, Borduas published the explosive Refus Global manifesto, signed by sixteen artists, fiercely condemning the clerical repression, fear, and intellectual stagnation of Duplessis's Quebec. Immediately fired from his teaching post, he lived in exile in New York and Paris, his masterpiece L'Étoile noire painted in 1957.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Saint-Hilaire Cemetery (Repatriated to Mont-Saint-Hilaire)
Mont-Saint-Hilaire (Quebec), Canada
GPS: 45.5667, -73.1833
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