Sculptor · Morocco
Bruno Catalano
Bruno Catalano (born 1960) is a French sculptor born in Khouribga, Morocco, to a Sicilian family. He is known for Les Voyageurs (The Travellers), life-size bronze figures carrying suitcases whose bodies are torn open, with large parts simply missing. Ten of them stood on the quays of Marseille in 2013, when the city was European Capital of Culture.
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From Khouribga to Marseille
Bruno Catalano was born in 1960 in Khouribga, the phosphate-mining town in central Morocco, the youngest of three children in a family of Sicilian origin. In 1970 the family moved to Marseille. His father trained him as an electrician, and at twenty he went to sea, working on the ships of a shipping company and later with the French sea-rescue service, the SNSM.
Clay, then bronze
He came to sculpture through modelling classes in Marseille, working first in clay. In time he set up his own workshop with its own kiln, made sculpture his main occupation, and moved from clay to large figures cast in bronze.
His signature came from an accident. In 2004 a figure of Cyrano he was working on was flawed, and instead of starting again he cut away the damaged part, leaving a hole through the body. From then on he made the gap the centre of his work: men and women in coats and hats, carrying a suitcase or a bag, whose chests and legs are missing, so that you see the street or the sea through them. Catalano says they are about emigration and travel — the part of yourself you leave behind when you go, which stays connected to you all the same.
How to look at a Voyageur
Walk around one. The middle of the body is simply gone, and whatever stands behind it — a harbour, a square, a crowd — fills the gap and changes with every step you take, so that no two people see quite the same sculpture. Then look at what holds the figure together: often the suitcase or bag, joined to the body by a thin strip of metal, is all that links the upper half to the lower. The traveller is literally held up by the luggage, and Catalano has described the suitcase in just those terms: a container of memories that steadies the person carrying it, roots that move with them. It is hard not to read the figures against his own life: a child who left Morocco for France, in a family that had already left Sicily, and a young man who then spent years at sea.
Marseille and beyond
In 2013, when Marseille was European Capital of Culture, ten life-size Voyageurs were installed along the city's waterfront, and pictures of them spread across the internet. In 2019, during the Venice Biennale, around thirty were shown in places around Venice. His galleries have since shown the figures in Paris, New York — where Galeries Bartoux gave him a solo exhibition in SoHo in 2024 — and Asia. One Voyageur now stands under water: it was submerged in the underwater museum off Marseille, the last of ten artists to contribute.
Where to see his work
Le Grand Van Gogh, a painted bronze about four metres tall, has stood since 2020 at the corner of 10th Avenue and 1st Street SE in Calgary, Canada, outside a residential building by Strategic Group: a young Vincent van Gogh walking with a bag in his hand and a canvas strapped to his back, the middle of his body missing. Two more Voyageurs stand in the building's lobby. In Marseille, Le Voyageur can be seen by snorkellers and divers in the Musée subaquatique, an underwater trail of sixteen sculptures off the city's coast. His figures are otherwise shown by his galleries, sometimes outdoors, as in a summer exhibition of monumental works in Arcachon.
See also
Ousmane Sow, another sculptor whose figures are best seen in public spaces; Mahi Binebine, a Moroccan painter and sculptor; African sculpture; and our lists of Moroccan sculptors and Moroccan artists.
