Born in 1931, George Alleyn studied at the École des beaux-arts in Quebec under Jean Paul Lemieux. By the late 1950s his lyrical abstractions began to attract the attention of the arts community, and in 1955 Alleyne went on to achieve international recognition when he moved to France, where he lived until 1971. In both 1958 and 1960 his work was chosen to be included in a selection of Canadian paintings featured in a Guggenheim Museum competition. The recipient of a bronze medal at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1959, Alleyn also represented Canada in the Venice Biennale of 1960, and his work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1970.