The Montreal painter Lise Gervais was 15 years old while the famous Refus Global manifesto had been signed. She discovered only a few years later at Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal all the potential of emancipation that could give the abstract expressionism.

Closer to the group of Borduas and Riopelle rather than the Plasticien, the works of Lise Gervais had been rapidly linked to the works of Marcelle Ferron or Jean-Paul Riopelle.  Young artist with a strong sensation in the art world in the 1960s. She won the Dow price in 1961 from the Salon du Printemps of the Museum of Fine Art of Montreal, while she was unknown to the art critic a few months earlier. She was considered as the rising star of modern painting.