MONTREAL.- Presented from June 19 to December 7, 2008, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition Refus global: 60 Years Later celebrates a momentous event in our history. It also highlights works by the Automatistes acquired by the Museum over the past ten years, thus paying tribute to the kind generosity of our benefactors, upon whom the Museum greatly relies to expand its collections. The exhibition features a selection of thirty-four paintings and drawings by Marcel Barbeau, Paul-Émile Borduas, Claude Gauvreau, Marcelle Ferron, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau and Jean-Paul Riopelle, as well as photographs of Françoise Sullivan taken by Maurice Perron, all of whom were signatories of the manifesto’s infamous preface. Visitors will also have the opportunity to view examples of the artists’ later works and thus witness the formal evolution toward non-referential abstraction.

Several works are of particular historical importance, including recent acquisitions like 14.48 or Glorious Cemetery (1948) by Paul-Émile Borduas, a painting that was reproduced in the manifesto Refus global; Untitled (1946) by Jean-Paul Riopelle is a work the artist created at the start of his career, one year after he joined the Automatistes; Pierre Gauvreau’s Warning to the “Pauèzes” (1947) is his own very personal interpretation of Automatisme; while Fernand Leduc’s Binary Colouring, Blue-Red (1964) is a painting that reveals the artist’s development in the period following Automatisme, when he sought to restore a sense of control in painting through hard-edged abstraction.

Three recent acquisitions of works by Jean-Paul Riopelle are included in the exhibition, and others are on view in the gallery dedicated to the artist. To give visitors a greater appreciation of the oeuvre of certain artists, some works that the Museum acquired previously are also presented in the exhibition.

Presented at Librairie Henri Tranquille in Montreal on August 9, 1948, the Refus global was a collective project by the Automatistes, a multidisciplinary group of sixteen artists1 who would soon become renowned in the fields of painting, dance, poetry and theatre. As leader of the Automatiste movement and a teacher at the École du Meuble, Paul-Émile Borduas played a pivotal role within the group. Inspired by his discovery of André Breton and Surrealism, Borduas encouraged artists to adopt the automatic impulse inherent in Breton’s writing and to work spontaneously, without any preconceived idea. Appealing to the sensibility of those striving for innovation, Borduas had a tremendous impact on individuals who were attracted to modern art and searching for alternatives to traditional academic painting.

The texts, plays, photographs (of the group) and illustrations in the Refus global make it evident that Borduas’s liberal views had implications on all the arts, but his influence reached beyond this scope, into the realm of politics and religion. His proclamations were radical and scandalous at the time, as he denounced the two ideologies that reigned supreme in Quebec during the 1940s, namely the religious regime of Catholicism and the conservatism of Maurice Duplessis’s Union Nationale party. It was a cry for liberation from these oppressive authorities and an appeal for an opening-up to the world. Considered to be vital to Quebec’s modernity, the Refus global triggered change. As people became aware of their isolation and were drawn to the new possibilities offered by Borduas’s suggestions, they caught up with current social and cultural international trends.