LAURE BRUNI

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 Biography and Exhibitions

Laure Stella Victorine Bruni, born in Liège on January 28, 1886 and died in August 1975 in Locle (Switzerland), is a French painter of Belgian and Swiss origin.

Laure Bruni comes from an Italian-speaking family, of Ticino origin. She is the great-granddaughter of the painter Fiodor Bruni and one of the two daughters of Constantin Bruni, a piano teacher established in Belgium, in Liège, from 1882, then conductor in this country (Liège, Antwerp) and in France. He will also be artistic director of the royal theater of Antwerp (1903-1906), of the grand theater of Geneva (1908-1917 and 1925-1926), and of the Nice opera.

She obtained French naturalization in 1898 like her parents and her sister.

She began to be interested in music, particularly the piano, before becoming a painter. She first exhibited in Switzerland, where her father directed the Geneva theater. She exhibits at the Moos gallery in Geneva.

From 1920, she exhibited paintings, landscapes and flowers in Paris, partly thanks to the gallerist Moos, also based in that city. Several exhibitions were dedicated to her by major Parisian galleries such as the Georges Petit gallery in 1924. She exhibited the paintings "Lande bretonne" in 1927, "Dans la Drôme" in 1928 and "Falaise au Tréport" in 1929 at the Salon des independents. Abel Bonnard prefaces the catalog of his 1928 exhibition at the Charpentier gallery. The opening of this exhibition attracted government figures, aristocrats, ambassadors and art critics. She exhibited again from 1935, in another gallery and at the Salon des Indépendants.

In 1927, she married René Gillouin, a man of letters and deputy chief of staff to the president of the municipal council of Paris; the religious ceremony takes place at the Reformed temple of Nice. She sometimes participates in Parisian social life alongside her husband.

Her stepson, Marc, died in 1940. At the start of the Occupation, the Germans reportedly searched her husband's Parisian home and took several of his paintings.

She followed her husband to Switzerland from 1943. She exhibited in this country, particularly marines, in Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, Lugano. But also in 1948-1949 in Neuchâtel or in Bienne in 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1955. Her husband moved back to Paris from 1948 and the couple owned a house in Vaison-la-Romaine in France. . She stays there for part of the year, while maintaining a workshop in Switzerland, in the canton of Ticino in Rovio then in the canton of Neuchâtel.

She divorced on December 18, 1958 and continued to paint, based in her studio in Les Brenets, in the canton of Neuchâtel.