Carette, Claude

Claude Carette was born at Anse-au-Foulon in Quebec in 1935. As the eldest son of Germaine Boudreault and Leopold Carette’s seven children, Carette began painting at the age of ten. He installs his easel on the hillsides overlooking the cliff of the cove and reproduces the landscapes available to him. Several times during his walks, Jean-Paul Lemieux noticed the young Carette paint and suggested that he join the École des Beaux-Arts de Québec where he taught him until 1955.

Upon leaving school, Carette divides her time between painting and the brass mines of Chibougamau to afford the purchase of equipment and the necessary to live. Despite a first solo exhibition at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City in 1956 giving him some public recognition, the young painter curious and eager for explorations embarks on Europe.

In Paris, he took courses in modern aesthetics from Francastel to the Sorbonne. Training he continues with Professor Sauriol at the University of Aix-en-Provence. A brief academic career, but many encounters and artistic discoveries earned him to exhibit at the Canadian House of Paris in 1958.

Upon his return to Quebec, he participated in the “Salon du Printemps” of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. A series of group and individual exhibitions showcased his work in Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and New York.

Now recognized as both a watercolourist and painter, oils are becoming more important in this decade. The sedentary lifestyle and the rent of a workshop in Old Montreal help the artist to use this medium on watercolor. For these same reasons, he creates more and more large formats. Several of his large-format works are presented at an imposing solo show at the Hôtel Méridien Complexe Desjardins in 1977.

Never abandoning watercolor, his work remains prolific on both canvas and arches. Many other individual exhibitions take place at the Morency and Clarence-Gagnon Art Galleries in Montreal and the Ste-Adèle Art Gallery in the following decade. At the end of the nineties, Carette exiles for a while in the Iles-de-la-Madeleine where he paints his last series of watercolors. He died from a long illness on August 26, 1999 in Montreal.