Louis Soutter

Louis Soutter is a Artiste of nationality Suisse, born with Morges, close to Lausanne, the June 4th 1871, deceased with Ballaigues, close to Vallorbe, on February 20th, 1942. By her mother, Marie-Cecile Jeanneret-Stake, he was relative of Le Corbusier, both were cousins resulting from German.

Biography

His/her father was pharmacist; his/her mother, musician, professor of song at the University of young girls of Morges, were a strong personality, magnet to organize concerts in their house and occurring on these occasions; his/her older brother and his younger sister were also musicians.

The young person Louis Soutter, raises shining, was a rather solitary boy, of anxious nature, dreamer, perhaps prone to the depression. He began studies of engineer at the University of Lausanne, stopped them to study architecture in Geneva, in the architect L. Viollier, then in an architect of Morges. No doubt the importance of the music in his/her parents, the concerts given in their house were determining for him. In 1892, it chooses to start a musical career, it left for Brussels and became the pupil of the violonist Eugene Ysaye, with the royal Conservatoire of Brussels.

It was, in Brussels, the time of the Art nouveau, the Groupe of the XX in the music, to which Isaye was close, that of the Symbolisme in the literature, poetry, philosophy, the theater, especially in the visual arts: painting Symbolist was the expression of the world interior, subjective, it was addressed to the spirit, with imagination, took as a starting point the European Mythologie S, the legends, the fairy tales, the Bible , it opposed the defect to the virtue, was délectait of imaginary, of beyond, of mysticism, death. The Woman was perceived like a being attractive and mysterious, for certain hieratic, warlike, virtuous, was idealized, for the other dominating one and devoting itself to the lust (for example the Pornocratès of Félicien Rops), perverse (Fernand Khnopff opposed nevertheless to this female perversity the virtue and the obliteration of his/her sister), cruel, of a fatal beauty which involved the men with their loss and death. It was into 1893 that appeared Salome of Oscar Wilde, in its French original version, of which the young heroin, which ordered the decapitation of Iokanaan (Saint Jean-Baptiste) was immediately comparable with very an all the more perverse and dangerous young girl that it was inconceivable that a teenager is it. It was this artistic, rich universe, effervescent, stimulant, which the young person Louis Soutter discovered in Brussels, and in which it was plunged. It is in Brussels, in 1894, in Brussels, that it became acquainted with an American young person, Madge Fursman, raises of Eugene Ysaye, excellent singer also, who will become his wife.

In 1895, Louis Soutter stopped his musical studies and settled in Lausanne to follow there the courses of drawing and painting, then in Geneva, in the workshop of Leon Gaud; at the end of the same year, it is established with Paris, in order to continue its studies in the workshop of Jean-Paul Laurens, of Benjamin-Constant Jean-Joseph, with the Académie Colarossi. From each one of these painters Louis Soutter accepted a teaching traditionalist, academist, in Switzerland, paintings of the mountain, rustic scenes, in Paris, great reconstitutions dramatic, scenes of harem or glorification of colonialism. In Paris, he became the friend of the American ceramist, Artus van Briggle, one of the representatives of the Art nouveau.

Been engaged to Madge Fursman, it left Europe with the end of the year 1896, for the the United States. There thought of being established with Chicago, remained three months there, then he left to be established with Colorado Springs, Colorado, with the foot of the Rocky Mountains, city in full expansion where the parents of Madge lived. After its marriage with Madge, in 1897, he became the professor of drawing and painting very appreciated of his pupils, then directing of the department of the fine arts of the Colorado College.

There are few testimonys on Louis Soutter and Madge, their couple, their social life. During the eight years which their marriage lasted, it made several voyages in Europe, always only. In 1903, Madge, undoubtedly very ambitious, not supporting the character dreamer and hypersensitive of her husband, required the divorce of the wrongs of Louis Soutter. This one definitively left the United States in 1903 in a state of great moral distress. After its return in Switzerland, he spoke very little about Madge; he entrusted however: “My wife was authoritative, it was used of me like machine to earn money, and returned to me depressive”, “It exploited me: it made me work during the day, then to take part then in long fashionable evenings”. In 1906, his/her uncle, Dr. Jeanneret, pushed it to look after his physical health and his depression, and thanks to him, Louis Soutter made a one year stay in the Sonnenfels Private clinic, in Spiez (Bern). Its state being improved, it could, in 1907, to consider a career of violonist. It entered the Orchestra of the Theater of Geneva (which will become the Orchestre of the French-speaking Switzerland), but its state dreamer and highly-strung person did not allow him to yield with the discipline of the orchestra. He was engaged by the Symphony orchestra of Lausanne, then by the Orchestra of Geneva, which it was obliged to leave in 1915. After that, it found work only in the small orchestras of tourist resorts. Eccentric, depressive, having kept its life in the United States the taste of the luxury, clothing elegant and beautiful objects, gaining little, it made pay its purchases by its family; this one, wearied, ends up putting it under the supervision of the municipal authorities of Morges, which authorities reflect it in pension against its liking with the Asylum of the Jura, in Ballaigues (Vaud), institution intended to accommodate the old men without incomes and incompetents to provide for their needs; it was 52 years old, it remained there until its death.

It was very unhappy, suffering there of promiscuity with poor and uncultivated old men, as of the degrading treatment to which it was sometimes subjected. He liked nature, he was good walker, he found comfort to observe it during long solitary excursions in the countryside. He devoted himself to the violin when he could it, and to the drawing which he had undoubtedly never given up, of which it remained however only little of testimonys. For lack of money, it drew with the pencil and the feather in books of schoolboy (of the drafts, drawings if not very in conformity with the traditional good taste time that were often used they to light the frying pans of the house). It is there its period known as “of the books” (1923-1930).

Thanks to his cousin Le Corbusier who were interested in his work, with the writer Jean Giono, famous artists in Switzerland, such as Rene Auberjonois and Marcel Poncet, and with friends, it acquired a small notoriety. It then carried out drawings with ink, larger, more worked out, more excavated, it is its period known as “mannerist” (1930-1937). The first exposure of its work took place in 1936, in the United States, thanks to the steps of Le Corbusier.

Its sight dropping, osteoarthritis having reached its hands, it could not hold any more one pencil or a feather. To continue to create, it soaked its fingers in the inkpot or painting. It is about its period known as “painting with the finger” (1937-1942).

He died in Ballaigues the February 20th 1942, at 71 years.

Work

Louis Soutter is one of the largest Swiss artists of the XXe century. Its work is immense, it includes/understands thousands of drawings and paintings, from which the majority disappeared. The art critic Michel Thévoz indexed approximately 2850 drawings and some paintings. He, perhaps wrongly, is regarded as belonging to the Rough Art. Jean Dubuffet indeed raised the question to know if it were to regard it as pertaining to this form of expression which it had just defined. Some, today, think it, others not. Dubuffet, when it defines its notion of Rough Art, had included in this form of expression the artists refusing to enter the economic system, the mercantilisation of art via the galleries, the museums, of the art critics, the artists solitary rejecting artistic current very, the prisoners, and by extension, the patients, the children, the mentally ills and all those creating without ever to have had artistic formation.

Today, the opinions are divided. Some put Louis Soutter in the Rough Art, whose creators, indeed without artistic culture and being described in a way spontaneous and inventive, are often mentally ills, that the general public in general associates to the only mentally ills, such as Adolf Wölfli and Aloïse Corbaz.

Others consider that Louis Soutter is large artist which was not helped by its family in her distress and her depression, which was rejected by the middle-class company and right-thinking person of Switzerland where it had been born, which could, in spite of its quasi-enfermement, at 52 years, in Ballaigues, to break with the Académisme which had been taught to him, to upset what it had learned and taught in Colorado Springs, and to invent a personal expression. Free electron, it left created a released artistic work of any influence, deeply human, penetrated by the desire of the beauty, the fear of the ugliness, initially a naive or sarcastic observation of the life, into which it introduced the nature and the world which surrounded it, then a vision mixing in more one fantastic architecture, of the characters of novels, of the topics biblical, dantesques, of the memories of its life passed, finally of the human beings, increasingly more naked, distressed and torn. Louis Soutter, in his work, gave a very important place to the Woman, a female being with two faces, represented at the beginning in his sensuality, his plenitude and his generosity, then, time passing for the artist, a beauty dangerous, fatal, persecuting, gradually made ugly by an incomprehensible hatred, of an ugliness terrifying at the end - fourteen years of creation of an extreme richness in spite of the simplicity of average the techniques which it had kept, the pencil, the feather and ink. When it had almost lost the sight, it “drew” with painting and the finger.

Period 1903-1923

Period of the “books”, 1923-1930

Period “mannerist”, 1930-1937

Period of “painting to the finger”, 1937-1942

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