Italian-born artist Aurelio Sandonato (1931–2012) moved to Montréal in 1951 and began his studies at the École des beaux-arts de Montréal in 1956. For more than 30 years, he taught visual arts at CÉGEP de Saint-Laurent. Among the works that he produced for the public space are Sculpture murale (circa 1982), an imposing composition of terra cotta elements in the Du Collège Métro station. Sandonato’s art production was imbued with architectural concerns in which the relationship among the artwork, the viewer, and the site is at the heart of the offering.
Artwork description
Installed at the top of a hill in Parc Saint-Laurent, Les promeneurs is an abstract sculpture composed of three pairs of rectangular columns made of red-painted steel. Each column has curved shapes carved out at its centre and the columns in each pair are of different heights.
The artwork represents a group of three people – a man, a woman, and a child. The artist has created a simple abstraction, emphasizing the vertical, and the human form is easily recognized. The bright colour adds to the artwork’s monumentality and brings a playful aspect.
This vitality, this optimal use of the park by the population,
led me to want to integrate Les promeneurs, to mix it in with people.
– A. Sandonato