Google review: Born in Montreal, Gauvreau attended the College Ste-Marie, then studied philosophy at the Universite de Montreal. He made his literary debut at the age of thirteen, when he wrote and produced a play, Ma vacation. During the forties he became friendly with the painter Paul-Emile Borduas, through whom he acquainted himself with Dadaism, Surrealism, Automatism, and the artists, journalists, and essayists who gravitated towards this important figure of the Montreal artistic community. These associations were to have a lasting effect on Gauvreau's aesthetic choices and his personal growth as a writer. He not only co-signed Borduas's famous manifesto, Refus global, but also articulated the theoretical aspects of Automatism for the general public. A constant defender of modern art after 1948, he never hesitated to engage in polemics, against both conservative art critics and ecclesiastical authorities (who looked upon non-figurative painting as an attack against the traditional virtues upheld by the Church and good Christian families).From 1944 on Gauvreau wrote poetry that was not published until much later. A series of poems, "Entrailles', did not appear until 1956 in the play Sur fil metamorphose. Etal mixte (1968) was composed in 1950. Brochuges, however, which he worked on during the summer of 1954, was published in 1956. These poems subvert average expectations: their word order is irretrievably broken; syntactical structures appear in disarray; phonic sounds, free of semantic charge, ultimately turn a shattered textual fabric into oneiric screams and howls.While continuing to compose poems, Gauvreau also wrote numerous plays and had some of them produced in Montreal theatres: Bien-etre in 1947, and La jeune fille et la lune and Les grappes lucides in 1959. His plays were never popular with audiences, and a number of directors commented bitterly on the insurmountable difficulties they posed. Jean Gascon, after reading Gauvreau's first long play L'asile de la purete, written in 1953, declared that it was "unproduceable'"”a comment possibly inspired by its strong Surrealist and Automatiste leanings. Yet three decades later this play can be seen to summarize Gauvreau's preoccupation with suicide, unrequited love, and polemical fights; and offers surprising glimpses of his view of himself and his contemporaries. The premature obituary of the hero by one of his foes appears to fit both Gauvreau's destiny and self-image: "He was a polemicist, lover, pornographer, man of letters, prophet, journalist, anarchist, wrestler, libertine, epic author.' Gauvreau also wrote plays for radio: Le coureur de Marathon, composed in the early 1950s, which won him the Canadian Radio Award in 1957; Magruhilne et la vie, written in 1952 and produced in 1969 at Studio d'Essai; and L'oreille de Van Gogh, which displays Gauvreau's obsessions, as well as those of the painter, by repeatedly using images associated with Van Gogh's anguish: mutilations, ear, mirror, knife, and bat.Gauvreau's dramatic works, as well as his poetry, represent a search for new meanings as well as new forms. Often conveniently and superficially dismissed as esoteric or hermetic, they nevertheless paved the way for later poetic developments, such as those of Raoul Duguay, Claude Peloquin, and Denis Vanier in the late sixties, and the experiments of the young writers who were associate with La Barre Du jour in the seventies. All of Gauvreau's texts reveal a need to peel off the various linguistic layers held tight by grammar, syntax, and semantics. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.