Automatist, Pierre Gauvreau was part of a circle of young artists from various discipines who gravitated around painter Paul Emile-Borduas in 1940’s Montreal. Together the Automatists revolutionized painting in restrictive Quebec of the Duplessis years. Inspired by the Surrealists, they found freedom of expression in abstraction pursued through automatism: an instinctive, unpremeditated form of creating art. Their manifesto Refus global (1948) is widely recognized as a crucial expression of Quebec modernism and the unrest that would eventually lead to the so-called ‘Quiet Revolution.’ Pierre Gauvreau was very active in the production of the manifesto [...]
