Watercolours find new home on Loyola Campus

 

A collection of 30 watercolours and oils by Fr. Guy Bruneau (1921-2002) was given to Concordia some 20 years ago, but it was only when the Faculty Club on the Loyola Campus was recently renovated that these works could be properly shown.

Bruneau was a Capucin monk who taught art at several seminaries and took courses at the École des beaux-arts du Québec, the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Doon School of Fine Arts and the Centre d’art de Percé.

Although he was an accomplished sculptor and painter, his most significant commissions were for works in glass. He conceived stained glass windows for the Church of Notre Dame de Roberval and the Church of St-Jerôme in Matane, as well as a monument in glass near the Chapel of the Redemption in Pointe-aux-Trembles.

In his art, Bruneau tried to capture the spiritual and physical essence of light. He was also fascinated by native cultures and their iconography.

In 1971 he was given permission by his superiors to study fine arts at the University of San Diego. He moved to Mexico as a missionary and continued his studies in Guanajuato at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

He returned to Quebec in 1973 and exhibited a series of paintings titled The Maya’Ztec Festival. They celebrate the universal belief in the afterlife, conveying the succession of birth-death-rebirth.

In 1985 Bruneau gave this series to Lonergan University College at Concordia. Upon the closing of the College in 2003, it was transferred to the Loyola Faculty Club.