Léon Bellefleur

Léon Bellefleur D.F.A. (February 8, 1910 February 22, 2007) was a French-Canadian abstract painter and print-maker.

Career Léon Bellefleur was born in Montréal, Quebec, in 1910, and by the age of ten was drawing and painting. He earned a teaching diploma at Jacques Cartier teachers college in Montreal, graduating in 1929 and had a career in teaching for the next 25 years. He was mainly self-taught as an artist, but took evening classes from around 1929 In 1948, he signed the manifesto Prisme d'yeux, which defended diverse approaches to art-making. He once said: The fundamental discoveries for me were poetry, surrealism and esoterism - and, in art, a certain automatism translating the life of dreams and the unconscious, the world of chance and mystery.

In 1954, he left teaching and traveled to Paris to study engraving with Johnny Friedlaender. He died in 2007 in Montreal. His papers are in the National Library and Archives of Quebec (P898).

Record sale prices In 2017, Bellefleur's Des rêves et du hasard, a 40" x 50" canvas, estimated at $18,000-$22,000, sold for $52,250 CDN (premium included) at the Heffel Auction, Vancouver.