Automatistes

An artistic movement in Quebec, 1941–54. Influenced by French Surrealism, the painter Paul-Émile Borduas aimed at applying the principles of Automatiste writing to the visual arts, by encouraging his followers—the Automatistes—to produce their works (painting, sculpture, dance, poetry) spontaneously, without preconceived ideas, and without respect to any form of academicism. The result in painting was often non-figurative. The group, of which the principal members were Borduas, painters Marcel Barbeau , Marcelle Ferron , Pierre Gauvreau , Fernand Leduc , Jean-Paul Mousseau , and Jean-Paul Riopelle , poet Claude Gauvreau , actress Muriel Guilbault , and dancers Françoise Sullivan , Françoise Riopelle , and Jeanne Renaud , exhibited together in 1946 and 1947, both in Montreal and Paris. They had a brief showing in 1946 in New York, at Franciska Boas's dance studio, where Sullivan was studying at the time. In 1948 they collectively signed the manifesto Refus global to profess their conviction that the form of art they advocated was intertwined with revolutionary ideological change in Quebec society. They were often ostracized because of their ideas. Borduas lost his job at the École du Meuble, but others, like Riopelle, achieved international fame.