Les Automatistes: Maurice Perron's Photo Portfolio
Maurice Perron Autoportrait ca. 1949–50; printed 1998 Collection Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec Gift of the Maurice Perron family
There is perhaps no single art movement in modern Canadian history more storied and influential than the mid-20th-century group of Montreal artists known as the Automatistes. Led by painter Paul-Émile Borduas and including artists Marcel Barbeau, Fernand Leduc, Françoise Sullivan, Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Jean Paul Riopelle, among others, the group’s 1948 manifesto Refus global vehemently rejected the stasis of Quebec’s religious and socially conservative culture, offering instead a vision of the future driven by creatively liberated ideas—an intellectual break that would come to define the revolutionary course of events to follow in the province.
In the Spring 2011 magazine feature “Le Grand Geste!,” art historian and curator Roald Nasgaard delves into this pivotal history and offers a new reading of the essential, though often underrated, importance of the Automatiste painters on the postwar international art stage. Here, a complementary portfolio of 10 archival images by the noted photographer Maurice Perron—who was a contemporary of Borduas and company and one of the signatories of Refus global—offers a rare window onto the Automatistes in their revolutionary prime, from early exhibitions of their abstract painting and surrealist-inspired performance art staged in Montreal apartments, to intimate portraits of the group’s key players.
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