Automatistes

Les Automatistes were a group of Quebec artists and intellectuals in the 1940s and 50s. They came together around avant-garde painter and teacher Paul-Emile Borduas. Although inspired by surrealism and particularly by the concept of automatism, Les Automatistes extricated themselves from the illusionistic bias of that movement and applied its principles to abstraction. The group exhibited at the studio of dancer Franziska Boas (1902 -1988) in New York in 1946, four times in Montreal (1946, 1947, 1951,1954) and once in Paris (1947), all relatively small venues. In 1948, Borduas, who was an activist for the separation of church and state in Quebec, wrote and his fellow Automatistes signed, a manifesto called Refus Global which became one of the pillars of the Quiet Revolution, a period of intense social change in Quebec. Les Automatistes, in addition to Borduas, were Jean-Paul Riopelle, Fernand Leduc, Fran??oise Sullivan, Marcel Barbeau, Pierre Gauvreau, Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau (see all previous in AskART), Madeleine Arbour, Bruno Cormier, Claude Gauvreau, Muriel Guilbault, Th??r??se Leduc, Maurice Perron, Louise Renaud and Fran??oise Riopelle. Source: ???The Dictionary of Art??? edited by Jane Turner (see AskART book references). Submitted by M.D. Silverbrooke, Art Historian and Collector, West Vancouver, Canada