Inspiration sur des poèmes de René-Guy Cadou

  Ct was around 1947 that Jean Bruneau met Cadou. The two men's sensitivity meant that they came to appreciate each other, and their exchanges soon became much more intense. In 1949 René Guy Cadou prefaced the catalogue of Jean Bruneau's paintings, and in 1950 it was the painter who created 12 gouaches inspired by Cadou's poems. In 1957 Bruneau organised a René-Guy Cadou exhibition at the Galerie d'Art Decré. He designed the poster, which was used again for an exhibition in Nantes in 1981.

 Text by Cadou on the catalogue for the Jean Bruneau exhibition in 1949

Jean Bruneau's canvases have the fatal character of autumn days full of the blood of leaves, carried by a violent wind towards the gypsies' resting place, somewhere on the edge of Meaulnes's domain.

For this painter, colour seems to be no more than an ornament of the mind, like a lantern with painted windows that habit carries at arm's length into the catacombs of childhood.

Under the smiling exterior of the line, on the flip side of a day that's too beautiful, a solitude and a bottomless sadness appear, providing a hopeless pretext for worrying characters.

The fact that Jean Bruneau has chosen to express himself as a poet, which does not mean that his painting incurs the disgrace of lyricism, is because he draws from his heart a luminous and skilfully blended ink that gives his latest works an accent of sincerity capable of making him, among so many others, recognisable.

I would like to draw the visitor's attention in particular to these tapestry boards that we would like to find in some antechamber of art.

I am pleased to bear witness for Jean Bruneau to his truth, to his poignant search in today's singularly overpopulated, unbreathable field.

René Guy Cadou