Paul-Émile Borduas

Paul-Émile Borduas (November 1, 1905 – February 22, 1960) was a Québecois artist known for his abstract paintings.

Borduas was born on November the first, 1905, in Saint-Hilaire, Quebec (a small village 50 kilometers from Montréal).

He was the fourth child of Magloire Borduas and Éva Perrault.

As a child, he engaged in bricolage - his first known artistic activity.

He received five years of formal elementary school education, (which ended at the age of twelve) and some private lessons from a village resident.

In his teens, Borduas met church painter and decorator Ozias Leduc, and Leduc agreed to take the young artist as an apprentice.

Leduc provided Borduas with basic artistic training, teaching him how to restore and decorate churches.

Leduc arranged for Borduas' instruction at the École Technique, in 1919, in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

In 1923, assisted by a scholarship Leduc had secured for him, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, continuing to work for Leduc at the same time.

He received prizes for his paintings at both of these institutions.

Despite discord between Borduas and the school administration, he continued his studies at Leduc's urgings.

Upon graduation in 1927 Borduas was hired by the Montreal Catholic School Board as a high school art teacher.

In January 1929 he began studies at the Ateliers d'Art Sacré in Paris, which he left to pursue church decoration work of Rambucourt, in the Meuse Valley, with Pierre Dubois in April.

He returned to Saint-Hilaire in June 1930 (his funds being depleted), began teaching part-time, and in 1933 returned to teaching high school.

In 1937 Borduas began teaching at l'École du Meuble.

This was an important time in Borduas' life: “by meeting young men of his own generation with the same tastes and the same need for action, he finally discovered a stimulating intellectual and social environment.”

In 1938, he encountered John Lyman, a Montreal painter and critic, at the first exhibition of one of Borduas' paintings.

Lyman encouraged Borduas' involvement with the Contemporary Arts Society, and in January 1938 he was elected vice-president of this group.

In 1941, he resumed painting after several years of study and teaching, during which time he and a group of students met regularly to discuss recent trends in European art.

His first abstract paintings date from this year, and in April 1942 he exhibited 45 gouaches inspired by the abstract surrealism of Joan Miró.

He became increasingly involved with about a dozen of his students, and they became known collectively as the Automatistes for their attempts to paint with pure psychic automatism as per the writings of André Breton.

In January 1946, the first group exhibit of Borduas and his students was held in New York City, followed in April by an exhibit in Montreal.

This was the first exhibit by a group of abstract painters in Canada.

A second Montreal exhibit followed in February–March 1947.

A critic, responding to this exhibit, coined the name "Automatists" for the group, after Borduas' painting Automatisme 1.47.

Borduas wrote Refus Global (or "Total Refusal", anglicized) in late 1947-early 1948.

It was circulated in a folder that contained other Automatists' writings.

This piece was originally intended to accompany an Automatist showing, but it was actually distributed alone.

Refus Global served as an important manifesto that advocated the separation of church and state in Quebec, especially for the arts.

In it Borduas "denounces the forces of oppression that had made of Quebec a suffocating environment, hostile to both individual and collective creativity".

We foresee a future in which man is freed from useless chains,

to realize a plenitude of individual gifts, in necessary

unpredictability, spontaneity and resplendent anarchy.

Until

then, without surrender or rest, in community of feeling with

those who thirst for better life, without fear of set-backs, in encouragement or persecution, we shall pursue in joy our

overwhelming need for liberation.

He was the leader of the avant-garde Automatiste movement and the chief author of the Refus Global manifesto of 1948.

Borduas had a profound impact on the development of the arts and of thought, both in the province of Quebec and in Canada.

Four hundred copies of the manifesto went on sale August 9, 1948.