Background
Louis Soutter was born on June 4, 1871 in Morges, Switzerland. His father was a pharmacist, his mother was a teacher of music at the Higher Women's School in the city of Morges (near Lausanne). Louis Soutter's father owned a pharmacy.
architect engineer musician painter
Louis Soutter was born on June 4, 1871 in Morges, Switzerland. His father was a pharmacist, his mother was a teacher of music at the Higher Women's School in the city of Morges (near Lausanne). Louis Soutter's father owned a pharmacy.
The boy grew up a gifted child. From an early age he understood all the sciences perfectly well and studied brilliantly. He studied engineering in Lausanne, architecture in Geneva, violin in Brussels, and painting in Lausanne and in Paris.
In the United States he gave drawing and violin lessons before becoming director of the Department of Fine Arts at Colorado College. Soutter became depressed and in 1902 returned to Switzerland, where he became a violinist in the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Symphonic Orchestra of Lausanne.
In 1922, he was institutionalized in the hospital of Eclagnens and later in the retirement home (Asile de Jura) in Ballaigues, where he would spend the rest of his life.
In 1927, his cousin Le Corbusier became interested in his drawings and began supporting him.
Louis Sutter was a very versatile person and drew everything he saw and did not see. The images of nature (landscapes, flowers, animals), fruits, vegetables, scenes from everyday life, mythological and biblical stories were depicted on his pictures. A women, especially female nudes played an important role. Persons, smiles, wounds, angels and gods, monsters, Greek temples, architectural illustrations were also presented during different periods of his work.
The first exhibition of his paintings was arranged with the support of Le Corbusier in 1936 in Hartford (Connecticut, USA), then Sutter's exhibitions were held in Lausanne (1937) and New York (1939).
Louis Soutter was best known for his thickly worked fingerpaintings of illusory and arcane figures. Now recognized as an early forger of the Art Brut movement, Soutter was largely unappreciated during his lifetime, creating his most esteemed works while spending the final years of his life in a mental institution. His expressive and bold figures - most typically in the form of black silhouettes - are simply rendered but convey an anguish and primal intensity. Largely cut off from his artistic contemporaries, Soutter’s work is distinctively modernist: pure expressions of emotions, dreams, and human experience.
Le Savon
Potentats d' Imfirmités
Autostyle, autostyle
Le Héros
Le culte
Masks
Crucifixion (Kreuzigung)
Trois Personnages
Pruneaux, Tranche, Feuille
Tête de femme de face - La Cruche saigne
Forêt
Fiancé fiancée
Amants, venez/Le coup d'envoi
Trois Têtes dans un Medaillon
Lunes et petites lunes tournez
Fakiristes
Les lys et les vièrges folles
Tête d’Homme
Sureau en fleurs
Prêtresses, druides
Trois têtes tropiques
Femmes sur un banc
Les raisins
La Vierge et l'enfant
Le plafond
Vaine alerte, Été
Voie latine et Corps de fer
Louis was considered a closed man, but he knew how to express properly his feelings in his creations.
He was not afraid of difficulties, worked obsessively, without thinking about anything, except for his work.
He married Madge Fursman in Brussels, a young American, and they moved to the United States. In 1903 they divorced.
