Léon Bellefleur was born in Montreal in 1910 and pursued a teaching career there while studying at the École des beaux-arts. In 1948 he signed the manifesto Prisme d'Yeux, along with Alfred Pellan and Jacques de Tonnancour. This was intended to rival the Refus Global which was published later that year.

Greatly influenced by Surrealism and the work of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miró, Léon Bellefleur's oeuvre is characterized by rich lyrical abstraction and strong graphical automatism. After retiring from teaching in 1954, Bellefleur's aesthetic became more introspective and intuitive, evolving into a unique sensibility and spontaneity through various mediums (oil, gouache, watercolour and lithography). His paintings exemplify his superb stylistic mastery, in which colour, movement and forms are dynamically combined to create a single grand gesture.

Bellefleur's works have been featured in numerous international exhibits over the years and have been acquired by major public and private collections worldwide.