born Nov. 1, 1905, Saint-Hilaire, Que., Can.
died Feb. 22, 1960, Paris, France
Canadian painter.
He was trained in Montreal as a church decorator and later studied in Paris. In the early 1940s, influenced by Surrealism , he began to produce "automatic" paintings and with Jean-Paul Riopelle founded the radical abstract group known as Les Automatistes ( 0441; 194651). His later works are reminiscent of those of Jackson Pollock , but the only U.S. influence he acknowledged was that of Franz Kline . See also automatism .