After retiring, Bellefleur travelled to Europe and set up a studio in Paris, producing prints and etchings. He also experimented with painting techniques, working with a spatula, which provided cleaner definitions to outlines than a brush and created various dimensional effects. Bellefleur spent most of the next 10 years working and travelling in Europe, before returning to Quebec permanently in 1966. His career was boosted by a retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1968. He continued to create lyrical and surrealist influenced painting, drawings, and prints through the 1980s.

He also led the Prisme d’Yeux (1948), artists who were open to traditional expression and inspiration, and who were responding to the more radical ideological approach of the Automatistes.

A first retrospective of Léon Bellefleur works was organized in 1968 by the NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA, travelling to Ottawa, London (Ontario) and Montréal. Numerous exhibitions of his work have been held in Brazil, Canada, England and Denmark. He was, in 1977, the first winner of the Prix Borduas; he also received the annual prize of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste in 1985 and an honorary Ph.D. from Concordia University in 1987. Léon Bellefleur was inducted into the ROYAL CANADIAN ACADEMY in 1989.