Her work has been exhibited all over the world and was profiled in the National Film Board of Canada's 1966 documentary In Search of Medea: The Art of Sylvia Lefkovitz.

[7][8] Supported by her working-class parents, she embarked on a lifetime of study by taking classes at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal.

[14] A year later, she moved on to Spain and Italy for a time before returning to Montreal, where she took a bookkeeping day job, taught art in the evenings, and "painted like mad.

[17][10] The Mexican muralists' depiction of oppressed peoples and social injustice inspired her to apply their techniques to the interpretation of these issues in her own country.

[18][10] Upon her return to Montreal, she received a commission from the Redpath Museum to create a series of murals depicting the life and career of Louis Riel.

[11][20] The following year, a second series of historical panels depicting the expulsion of the Acadians was exhibited in Gallery XII in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

[3] In Mexico City, she experimented with different lacquers under Professor José L. Gutiérrez at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and further mastered her mural technique.

She also won major public and private commissions in both Europe and Canada, including The Chorus, Fathers of Confederation and the Divine Comedy.