He received five years of formal elementary school education, (which ended at the age of twelve) and some private lessons from a village resident.

In January 1929 he began studies at the Ateliers d'Art Sacré in Paris, which he left to pursue church decoration work of Rambucourt, in the Meuse Valley, with Pierre Dubois in April.

In 1941, he resumed painting after several years of study and teaching, during which time he and a group of students met regularly to discuss recent trends in European art.

He became increasingly involved with about a dozen of his students, and they became known collectively as the Automatistes for their attempts to paint with pure psychic automatism as per the writings of André Breton.

[1] We foresee a future in which man is freed from useless chains, to realize a plenitude of individual gifts, in necessary unpredictability, spontaneity and resplendent anarchy.

Until then, without surrender or rest, in community of feeling with those who thirst for better life, without fear of set-backs, in encouragement or persecution, we shall pursue in joy our overwhelming need for liberation.

Even those who had tired of the repressive Duplessis régime, and advocated great social changes in Quebec, were reluctant to back Borduas' thorough condemnation of the Catholic Church[8]—such a central influence on the French Canadian populace.

[9] Unfortunately, this more moderate composition, which clearly communicated Borduas' intentions in releasing Refus Global, was not enthusiastically received by the public or the presses.

However, despite early denouncements, the manifesto marked the beginning of profound social change in Quebec and signalled the dawn of the Quiet Revolution.

[10] In 1953 Borduas moved to New York, where he saw the works of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko and began to use the palette knife to apply his paint.