The Black Star (L’étoile noire), 1957

Long considered Borduas’s masterpiece, The Black Star was awarded a Guggenheim International Award shortly after the artist’s death. It displays the synthesis of the plastic language of his Parisian period: oppositions between strong contrasts (black and white) and more subtle ones (black and brown), and a calculated distribution spots on a white ground.

In 1957 Borduas could not have guessed at the existence of what astronomers have been calling “black holes” since the 1960s. He created a poetic image of them avant la lettre.