Edmond Dubrunfaut

Edmond Dubrunfaut (1920, Denain – 2007) was a Belgian painter.
While Edmond Dubrunfaut was two years old, his family, in search of work, settled in Belgium, in Calonne, a village of quarries and cement manufacturers of Tournaisis. His mother died when he was only four years old.

At the age of 15, Dubrunfaut, who was supported by his aunt with his father, entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Tournai where he attended the painting course. Dubrunfaut quickly abandoned this section for drawing lessons by Jean Leroy (painter) and painting by Léonce Pion.

In 1937, Dubrunfaut went to Paris where he visited the World's Fair. He discovered the work of many artists (Raoul Dufy, Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Strebelle, Wynants, Jespers tapestries and Charles Counhaye ceramics) who persuaded him that monumental art and tapestry has a future.

Between 1940 and 1943, he attended Charles Counaye's monumental painting course at the National School of Architecture and Decorative Arts of Cambre. At the end of 1942, he founded a workshop in Tournai, the atelier Leroy. At the Liberation, in 1945, he created a second workshop, the workshop Taquet. Three years later he published The Manifesto for Mural Art and became a member of the Young Belgian painters.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, he founded with Deltour and Somville the Center for the renovation of the Tournai tapestry. In 1947 he published The manifesto of mural forces that marks the birth of the group. He participated in the creation of the groups Art and Reality (1954) and Cuesmes 68 (1968). From 1947 to 1978, he taught monumental art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mons. In 1979, he took part in the creation of the Tournai Foundation for tapestry, fabric arts and wall arts.

Some of his works are kept at the Institute of Labor, Economic and Social History in Seraing.