This year’s Salesian College Sunbury Hall of Fame recipient for 2020 is Bruno Leti – an Alumni from the 1950’s.
Bruno is an internationally and nationally recognised, and exhibited artist; painter, printmaker and monotypist, with a distinguished prior career in art education.
Bruno was born in Italy in 1941 and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1950. He lived on a forty thousand acre farm in Clonbinane, an hour north of Melbourne with his family, at the age of nine.
He was born during the war, and his father, and uncle rescued captured Allied prisoners of war from a camp in San Lorenzo. One of those airmen, Humphrey Jowlett, owned the farm on which they initially stayed.
Bruno and his brother Carlo boarded at Salesian College Rupertswood from February 1952. Clonbinane was two hours from school.
After graduating, Bruno studied fine art in Melbourne at RMIT and continues to live and work in Melbourne. He trained as teacher at University of Melbourne, Monash University and RMIT University.
Bruno is not an artist to be swayed by fashion, or trend. He has been successful in his own right, exhibiting extensively since 1968. His artistic career received a boost after leaving his teaching positions, within secondary education in the Mallee Country, and elsewhere, and later teaching art at the National Gallery of Victoria.
He has won a number of major and prestigious awards, including the Pollock-Krasnar Foundation Grant in New York, a State Library of Victoria Fellowship in Melbourne, and residencies at the Australian National University in Canberra.
Currently represented in most National, State collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Parliament House, National Museum of Australia, the Children’s Court of Victoria and the State Galleries of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.
Bruno’s artwork is also held and featured in Washington DC, Iowa City USA, Milan Italy, New Zealand and has previously been featured in Britain and Japan.
He also has magnificent artwork on display at University art Collections including Melbourne, RMIT, Western Australia, Tasmania, Deakin at Geelong Charles Sturt, and Australian National University.
This year, due to the pandemic, our Annual Awards Ceremony took place virtually and therefore Bruno Leti was unable to visit the College in person to accept his Hall of Fame Award. Click here for a copy of his acceptance speech.
We congratulate Bruno on this prestigious and wonderful achievement and look forward to welcoming him onsite soon.
