Galerie Molinas

Marie Claire Fauteux studied at the Art Association of Montreal, and then traveled to Europe to continue studying art. She painted portraits and landscapes, worked as a mural decorator, and a professor of fine arts. She first exhibited her work at the Art Association of Montreal in 1912, and continued to show her paintings there until 1947. She debuted her work at the Royal Canadian Academy in 1916, but would only show there four more times before 1947. In 1916-1917, Fauteux exhibited her work with two other female artists, Rita Mount and B. Lemoine, in a small group show at the Saint Sulpice Library in Montreal. She was a teacher at the boarding school Notre Dame du Sacre Coeur in New York, and at the Trafalgar Institute in Montreal. After the First World War she went to Paris with the bursary she received from the Women's Art Society in 1921. Fauteux became the Minister of Foreign Affairs while in France. She took classes from Maurice Denis for two years, and then traveled to Rome in 1927. Fauteux was held as a prisoner at the Besancon concentration camp during the German occupation of France, and for the next four years in captivity she made drawings that depicted how she and her inmates spent their time. These drawings would later be rendered into paintings, as well as provide illustrations for her own book, "Fantastic Interlude." When she returned to Canada in 1947 she was featured in an exposition at the Galerie l'Art francais in Montreal. She would then go on to teach painting at the School of Fine Arts in Montreal.