It was the discovery and acquisition of facsimiles of works by Évariste Desparois that gave the impetus for Sébastien Hudon’s essay. Hudon describes the first layer of a long-term investigation, a noble mission to bring back from oblivion an inventive artist who created photomontages that earned him ephemeral celebrity. Unknown to historians, a mysterious figure even unto his death, Desparois emerged in an era when modernity was taking off in Quebec. Based on sparse documentation, Hudon follows Desparois’s career, finding clues to his stay in Europe in the orbit of Riopelle and Borduas. “What could have happened for a contemporary artist who was among the signatories of Prisme d’yeux and Refus global to be so utterly wiped out of the history of art and photography in Quebec?” Hudon wonders. “The surprising disappearance of Évariste Desparois, and the splitting up of his body of work, bespeaks the fate of so many artists.”