In the House of Paul-Émile Borduas
A Place for Art, A Place to Live
A Meeting Place
Artist : Maurice Perron
Title : Picnic in St-Hilaire, 1947
Technique : Gelatin silver print
Size : 9,4 x 9,3 cm
Collection : Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Catalog number : 1999.150
Mention : Donation from the Perron familyThe doors of the Borduas house were always open to friends and students. The young artists in Borduas’ circle frequently went to Saint-Hilaire to visit him. In summer, some of them even rented nearby cottages so that they could be around him and meet other members of the group more assiduously and regularly. Occasionally Borduas invited them to stay in the house – Fernand Leduc lived there in August 1942, Jean-Paul Riopelle was there in the winter of 1944-1945 and Maurice Perron stayed in the spring of 1948.
In time, the house became a meeting place for artists in the Automatist movement. Some of them no doubt came to talk and work in Borduas’ studio, which occupied the basement of the house. The studio received light from a few small windows and had a little wood stove. Two large doors made it possible to move large creations in or out. The studio remained rudimentary. The young artists gathered around Borduas in his home to take part in discussions. The ideas of the Automatist group took shape in these gatherings, as did the first concepts that led to Refus global.
Children's artwork exhibit at the Borduas house, 1950.After the manifesto came out, young artists no longer flocked to the studio in the same way. Nevertheless, it was a place where Borduas continued to receive a few clients, friends and acquaintances in the artistic world. Between 1949 and 1952, he organized several exhibitions there. On these occasions, the great room was turned into an art centre and gallery. At first, he presented pictures made by his children and the young friends who came to draw with them. These exhibitions were fresh and spontaneous. The children’s drawings covered the walls of the ground floor. Later, Borduas organized a few exhibitions of his own work. One of these exhibitions, held in November 1950, was such a success that only one of the some forty works on display remained unsold. He repeated this experience in 1951 and 1952, and the house once again became an art gallery, a meeting place and a centre of the dissemination of ideas.
Header image: Children's artwork exhibit at the Borduas house (detail), 1950.
Passage from Projections libérantes (Liberating projections):
« Children, whom I now never lose sight of, open wide the door to surrealism and automatic writing for me. The most perfect condition for painting has at last been revealed to me. I had made peace with my first feeling about art, which I expressed something like this: “art, an ever-fresh spring that flows unimpeded from man.” The confusion of this child’s definition, which I nevertheless retrieve for its opposition to any idea of impediment when it comes to creative work, gives sentimental expression to the need for abundant exteriorization. In the noble hope of making me a slave like everyone else, with my trusting acquiescence, people scuttled this. After being shipwrecked and submerged for a long period, this primordial need rose to the surface. My behaviour was thus modified: it enables me to have a new contact full of faith in the society of half-liberated men and women – a society whose existence I hadn’t even suspected in Montréal.»
Letter of invitation to an exhibit of children's art, 1950
« November 18, 19 and 20 [1950], a small exhibit of watercolors will take place in my studio. It is a pleasure to inform you of this event and I hope that it will be possible for you to come with your friends. »
In a letter dated December 12 1950, Borduas writes :
«You have probably received, near a month ago, a piece of paper informingyou of a similar exhibit taking place right here, in the living room that you know. The result was astonishing! More than three-hundred people showed up and they left only one of the forty exposed watercolors!»
© Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire, 2014.
All rights reserved.