JORDI BONET (1932 - 1979)

Jordi Bonet was born in on the 7th of May in 1932 in a Catalan family of traditional noble values.

The walks Jordi had with his father in search of Roman ruins, left him he later said, with a sense of astonishing awe.

He devoted himself to observe the grand masters, the likes of Velazquez, Goya and Picasso.

He thereafter stopped his studies and worked to perfect his technic and his pictorial style.

In 1949, he deepened his knowledge of the Catalan Culture, thanks to his uncle the architect Lluis Bonet i Gari, who welcomed him into his house in Mallorca. Impressed by his studies, Jordi then studied the work of Gaudi, and the Roman and Gothic monuments.

During five years in Barcelona, he dived into the universe of a distinguished cultural level, Antonio Prats, Antonio Vila Arufat and Josep Gudiol.

Then at the age of twenty two, he decides to travel. He went to France and then to . And in 1954, he installed himself in Canada and lived in Trois -Rivières. He quickly became friends with Marcel Couture, Clément Marchand and in adopted the family of Albert Jutras. He devoted himself to work with ceramic and was joined by Jean Cartier and Claude Vermette, and does a spectacular apprenticeship. He exposes at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal in March of 1959.

Jordi married, traveled back to France and Catalonia with his wife, Huguette Bouchard, there he encountered Salvator Dali. After this trip, he decided to stop and to finish with this stage in his life.

A year later, he started a new artistic period and is now definitely rooted in Montreal. It’s the era of great murals of ceramic for Jordi, Saint-Raphael's Church, The Séminaire de Metabetchouan, the Convent Des Ursulines in Loretteville, The Faculté des Sciences de la Nouvelle Cité Universitaire de Québec (he executes this last work at Coutrai in Belgium in June 1961).

He is now internationally recognized and the commissions are more in demand and important.

Jordi is constantly at work; he produced great murals such as “Homage to Gaudi” at the Place des Arts in Montreal, another was commissioned by Sierra Leone, another one for the Pavilion of the as well as the one at the North American Tower in Toronto, etc…

His perseverance finally pay's off and in February 1964; a book is published “Jordi Bonet, Le Signe et la Terre” by Jacques Folch-Ribas an architect. In 1966 he is elected associated member of l'Académie des Arts du Canada and member de l'Association des Artistes Professionnels du . The same year he is named professor of art at l'École d'Architecture de l'Université de Montréal.

In 1969, Jordi Bonet moved into the Manoir Rouville Campbell in Mont Saint-Hilaire. Guy Roberts, the author of the second book published on Jordi Bonet, tells us that Jordi's work started in this place. Bonet continued to perfect his technic and started to work with cement and metal.

It’s here he executed his majestic glass mural, for the Chapel at the John F. Kennedy airport in New York (Terminal 4), one at the National Centre of Arts in Ottawa, another for the Metropolitan Hospital in Philadelphia and the mural at the Grand Théâtre de Québec.

After having reached professional success, he goes through a personal tragedy, the loss of his son Stephane in 1971 and in 1973 Jordi himself was diagnosed with leukaemia. Doctors gave him but a month to live, they of course did not take into consideration the will of this man who would fight on and live for another six years.

He founded the group Para in 1975, and a year later he started what is today his artistic legacy “Le Livre des Naissances”, a work consisting of 240 drawings.

He died on the 25th of December 1979. A memorable day in itself.

That day we lost an artist, like all the great masters before him, he left his mark on a grand scale. His existence was but a mere forty seven years.

Jordi Bonet, represented the universe that surrounded him. He was a Catalan in Quebec, but as all great artist, his genie passed all frontiers.

Text by: Father Jordi Figuerola-Rotger, Curator of the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona