In the House of Paul-Émile Borduas

Introduction
A Place for Art, A Place to Live
A Cherished Mountain
A Global Refusal
Exploring Borduas' Art
The River of Time
Looking Back

The Final Voyage

Paul-Émile Borduas, Black Star, 1957, oil on canvas.
Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts,
gift from M. et Mme Gérard Lortie. 
Photo Luc Bouvrette.
© Paul-Émile Borduas Estate / SODRAC (2013)
The period of rupture that followed the publication of Refus global, as well as the separation from his family, led Borduas to put his travel plans into action. He dreamed of spending some time in New York, before journeying to London and Paris and, eventually, Tokyo. He began with a stay in Provincetown in the summer of 1953 and then, in October of the same year, went to live in New York. The first summer he spent in the United States was marked by frenzy of painting. Borduas worked nearly 12 hours a day. Most of the paintings he produced were destroyed. He explored and experimented, resumed and recommenced. He felt that this voyage marked not only a turning point in his life but also major changes in his artistic gesture and production. Furthermore, on arriving in New York, he found a studio, “immense, flooded with light and all white.” Borduas had never possessed such a luminous studio and had never had the opportunity to paint in such good natural light. It was a very prolific period for the artist, who began to produce work as never before. His painting was undergoing an enormous evolution.

On becoming acquainted with Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock and with action painting, Borduas started to paint on much larger canvases and transformed his artistic production. He increasingly incorporated “accidents,” which were left as they were in the painting. His New York period was enriching and his reputation as an artist was growing fast. Nevertheless, even in New York, Borduas felt the lure of Paris. He hoped that he would find a warmer and friendlier artistic milieu in a French-speaking cultural environment that was more in keeping with his values and temperament.

In 1955, therefore, he flew to Paris, but he never found the artistic milieu he dreamed of there. Over the next five years his work became increasingly minimalist both formally and pictorially. His black and white canvases testify to his desire to explore the limits of painting while conveying the glory of its materiality. Large white backgrounds, harking back to his work in Provincetown, were now created with thick layers of spatula-applied paint, interrupted by dark forms and splotches, which gradually took up more and more space. Eventually these brown or black surfaces occupied most of the canvas, leaving only a few shards of white light to remain.

Borduas continued to paint with intensity, despite his slowly failing health. Throughout his life, but especially in the work of his last years, he never wavered from the quest for greater self-knowledge. On February 22, 1960, the leader of the Automatist movement died in his Paris studio.

Header image: Detail of the entrance of the 19, rue Rousselet in Paris, Paul-Émile Borduas' last place of residence. Photo Luc Bouvrette.

Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960) «I first recognized myself in my village and then in my province; I recognized myself as French Canadian, more Canadian than French, on my first trip to Europe; Canadian (pure and simple, very much like my compatriots) in New York; and North American for the last little while. From here, I hope to possess the entire Earth.»