Young and innovative, Montreal’s Automatistes revolutionized painting in the 1940s. Living in the restrictive Quebec of the Duplessis years, painters, dancers and writers—led by Paul-Émile Borduas and inspired by the Surrealists—found freedom of expression in abstraction pursued through automatism: an instinctive, unpremeditated form of creating art.

On August 9, 1948, the Automatiste painters published Refus global, a call for the right to live and make art spontaneously and freely. The group would be acclaimed internationally—due largely to Jean-Paul Riopelle. Sixty years later, the Automatiste legacy is alive in Jean-Paul Mousseau’s murals, Marcelle Ferron’s stained glass works, Claude Gauvreau’s plays and Françoise Sullivan, Françoise Riopelle and Jeanne Renaud’s dances.

Sumptuously illustrated, The Automatiste Revolution accompanies the first comprehensive exhibition in English Canada devoted to the Automatistes’ works.