Paris; 1955-1960

Paris: 1955 - 1960

     In October 1955, Borduas moved to Paris, as the exhibition Borduas: Aquarelles récentes was being presented at the L'Actuelle gallery in Montreal. Soon after, in November, twelve of his paintings were shown in Brazil in the Artistas Canadenses exhibition, held at the Musea de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. In 1957, the Martha Jackson gallery in New York organized the Paul-Émile Borduas: Paintings 1953 - 1956 exhibition; Borduas participated in 35 peintres dans l'actualité exhibition held at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and in the Contemporary Canadian Painters exhibition which traveled in Australia in addition, his work were included in Recent Developments in Painting exhibition at Arthur Tooth and Sons in London.

     During the last years of his life, his paintings were increasingly present on the international scene. Without drawing an extensive list, we do note that we found works in exhibitions in Brussels, Montreal, London and Düsseldorf in the summer of 1958. During the fall, his paintings were shown in Toronto, as well as Utrecht and Groningen in the Netherlands. In 1959, he presented his work in Geneva, Paris and Cologne. A first retrospective exhibition of the Automatists was presented in the fall of 1959 at the Galerie de l'Étable of the Montreal Musem of Fine Arts under the double title of Automatisme — Paintings by Barbeau, Borduas, Ferron, Gauvreau, Leduc, Mousseau and Riopelle / Art Contemporain.

     The artistic endeavours of Paul-Émile Borduas ended prematurely, on February 22nd 1960, when the painter died in his studio in Paris.