Prieurs Volants – Kittie Bruneau

BRUNEAU, Kittie (1929-2021) 
Titled on the lower left “Prieurs Volants” Etching
Signed and dated on the lower right: K Bruneau 78
Numbered on the lower center: 22/75
19x32cm – 7,5×12,5″

Bruneau was born in Montreal on 12 October 1929. She studied at École des beaux-arts de Montréal from 1946 to 1949. She studied for a year at the Montreal School of Arts under the supervision of Ghitta Caiserman-Roth. As a young woman, Bruneau was torn between the visual arts and dance. Following her studies, she travelled to Paris, where she spent the next ten years. While in Europe, she danced in the corps de ballet for the Ballets de Rouen, and the Ballets de l’étoile of Maurice Béjart. 

In 1961, Bruneau moved to Bonaventure Island near Percé, Quebec where she lived and worked until 1972.  At that time, the Province of Quebec evicted all residents in order to depopulate the island. Her island studio is preserved as part of the Île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé National Park. Since then she has worked each summer in a studio on Pointe-Saint-Pierre, a few kilometers from Bonaventure.

Bruneau has a direct approach, using bright colours and a free gestural manner to portray figures and objects combined in compositions that have their roots in the world of poetry and dream. She paints with the canvases on the floor, walking over them as she works. Her work aligns with surrealism, with some aspects of automatism. Other artists who explore this territory include in Quebec, Alfred Pellan and Jean Dallaire; and internationally, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky.

She has collaborated with Leonard Cohen, Claude Haeffely, Françoise Bujold, Michaël La Chance and other poets to produce work that combines literature and the visual arts. Between 1982 and 1992, she painted seven murals in various places in Quebec.

Bruneau’s work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Canada Council Art Bank, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art.

Bruneau was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts  She died at the age of 91 on 6 April 2021