Paul-Émile Borduas

Who was Paul-Émile Borduas?

Paul-Émile Borduas was a Canadian painter known for his abstract paintings. He was also an activist for the separation of church and state, especially for art, in Quebec.

Borduas was born on November the first, 1905, in Saint-Hilaire, Quebec. He was the fourth child of Magloire Borduas and Éva Perrault. As a child he engaged in bricolage - his first known artistic activity. He received five years of formal elementary school education, and some private lessons from a village resident. Fortuitously, Borduas met Ozias Leduc in the winter of 1921-1922, and Leduc agreed to take the young artist under his wing. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice to Ozias Leduc, who was a church painter and decorator. Leduc provided Borduas with a basic artistic training, teaching him how to restore and decorate churches. Leduc arranged for Borduas' instruction at the École Technique, in 1919, in Sherbrooke, Québec. In 1923, assisted by a scholarship Leduc had secured for him, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, continuing to work for Leduc at the same time. He received prizes for his paintings at both of these institutions.