Marius Plamondon

Marius Plamondon
The soprano Muriel Hall and her husband Marius Plamondon
Born	1914 Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Died	1976
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Stained glass artist, teacher
Known for	Windows in Saint Joseph's Oratory, Montreal

Marius Plamondon (1914–1976) was a Canadian sculptor and stained glass artist who made a significant contribution to the revival of the art of stained glass in Quebec during his lifetime. His most famous work is the set of ten stained glass windows he made for Saint Joseph's Oratory, Montreal.

Marius Plamondon was born in 1914 in Quebec City, Quebec. He studied at the Quebec City École des beaux-arts. He spent time in Italy where he studied sculpture. In October 1938 he went to work with the sculptor Henri Charlier in France. He was also interested in the work of the sculptor Jean Lambert-Rucki and his use of the expressive distortions of African art.

Plamondon was part of the remarkable revival of the arts in Quebec in 1940–42, with Louis Guay and the painter Jean Paul Lemieux. He insisted that stained glass artists had to evolve new ways of expression to complement the new, simplified architecture of the time. Plamondon became professor and director of the Quebec School of Fine Arts. Plamondon made twenty windows for the chapel of the novitiate of the Clerics of Saint Viator, Joliette, described in a 1947 study by Maximilien Boucher. The novitiate had been built in 1939 following a design by architect René Charbonneau. Plamondon's magnificent windows help create an atmosphere of mystery and contemplation in the chapel, which has been called a modern version of the German church in Frielingsdorff. Plamondon also created statues for the chapel.

In 1951–52 Plamondon sculpted three niches to hold Marial images in the facade of the chapel of Notre-Dame de Lourdes at Lac Bouchette. In 1954 Plamondon's stained glass windows were installed in the 1920s Église du Très-Saint-Sacrement in Quebec, adding color to a rather austere neo-Romanesque nave. He received a research grant from the Royal Society of Canada that let him visit Europe in 1955–56 to document ancient and modern stained glass. Plamondon was among the artists selected to decorate the interior of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, owned by the Canadian National Railway, which opened in 1958. He contributed a stained glass mural. Others were Jean Dallaire (wall hanging), Claude Vermette (ceramic tiles), Julien Hébert (bronze elevator doors) and Albert Edward Cloutier (carved wooden panels).