Les Automatistes

movement 1942-1948 Quebec Canada

Les Automatistes were a group of Québécois artists who formed around the painter Paul-Émile Borduas in Montreal in the early 1940s. Taking their cue from Surrealist automatism - the practice of letting the hand move without conscious control - they abandoned figurative painting for fluid, non-objective abstraction and carried the same rebellion into poetry, dance, and drama. The journalist Tancrède Marcil Jr. nicknamed them after their 1947 exhibition. In 1948 Borduas published the collective manifesto Refus global, a sweeping attack on the Catholic Church's authority and Quebec's conformist culture that cost him his teaching post; unable to find work, he left Quebec permanently in 1953. Though the group dispersed soon after the manifesto, its insistence on expressive freedom made it a forerunner of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, and its intuitive, painterly abstraction opened the door to modern art in Canada.

Exposition des Automatistes, 1947 Claude Gauvreau, Julienne Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, Marcel Barbeau, Madeleine Arbour, Paul-Émile Borduas,
Exposition des Automatistes, 1947 Claude Gauvreau, Julienne Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, Marcel Barbeau, Madeleine Arbour, Paul-Émile Borduas,Public domain (credit: Archives La Presse) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Fluid, non-figurative abstraction: biomorphic shapes that seem to flow and merge
  • Spontaneous, unplanned marks - paint applied with palette knives, fingers, even blindfolded
  • Lively, painterly surfaces with visible gesture, in deliberate contrast to hard-edge geometric abstraction
  • Compositions without a fixed center or preconceived structure, mirroring free association
  • Layered washes of color suggesting atmosphere and depth without depicting anything

Key figures

  • Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960) — Leader of the group and chief author of the Refus global manifesto (1948)
  • Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) — Automatiste painter-sculptor who carried the movement's art onto the international stage
  • Marcelle Ferron (1924-2001) — Signatory of Refus global, later celebrated for her paintings and stained glass
  • Françoise Sullivan (b. 1923) — Dancer and artist who extended automatism into performance (Danse dans la neige, 1948)

Example works

  • Refus global — Paul-Émile Borduas and the Automatistes (1948)
  • Danse dans la neige — Françoise Sullivan (1948)
  • La Joute — Jean-Paul Riopelle (1969)

Sources

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