– All Edouard Vallet in a beautiful book
We think we know him, because the Geneva native has given us such an immortal image of Valais! But a rich publication aroused interest in the artist who was also an engraver.
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The most reproduced work by Edouard Vallet, already considered a “masterpiece” by critics of the time, the oil on canvas “Sunday Morning” (1908) was deposited by the Confederation at the Kunsthaus in Zurich.
Ed. To the sheep
We can look at his “Lumberjack”, the most impressive of his youthful paintings, straight in the eyes, there is already all the knowledge of a human condition. Authentic. Clairvoyant. And so durable. Painting beings, one could even say souls, rather than nature in its dramatic immensity, Edouard Vallet (1876-1929) never stopped collecting labels.
“Vallet offers us the spectacle of healthy art”
Review in the Tribune de Genève, 1912
Known for his introverted reserve – inversely proportional to his “violent desires” to make an impact – isn’t the artist THE painter from Valais? He wears another particular sign: he is also “the most Genevan of the Valais painters”, the student fleeing from the lake shore who found a deep, ritual, silent land, which was able to retain the artist. Who perhaps revealed it to himself? “Vallet”, said a critic in “La Tribune de Genève” in 1912, “offers us the spectacle of a healthy, honest, simple and at the same time highly and subtly organized art”.
It is this hunter of sincerity that we loved, as a painter, in Gianadda (2006). It is this modern, graphite arched over a synthetic art that we discovered, crazy designer, at Zion Penitentiary (2012). Today it is the engraver, as inspired as he is technical, as subjective as he is representative, who occupies the two volumes of a new collection.
Signed Jean-Charles Giroud, former director of the Geneva Library and one of the artist’s best connoisseurs, bears the brunt of it. And… the point! It combines anecdotes, the life of Edouard Vallet, the popular history of a canton with the exhibition of an artistic temperament and a look at his career. Welcome to six points to a work of winning sincerity!
A man, an artist
“Self-portrait with the press II”, oil on canvas (1916). The following year Edouard Vallet was inspired by this same composition in an etching.
Jacques Dominique Rouiller
The face is not always the mirror of the soul in Vallet’s work, which preserves its precise design. He often captures the figures from afar, as a procession dissolves. Or when they are busy with a task, with their back bent or their attention frozen. Thus entrusting the sense of existence to the entire composition. But when he approaches beings like a portraitist, caressing humanity with his kindness, he lets life come to the surface, hard. And sometimes sweeter. In this self-portrait, taken the year he turned 40, it is also a status claimed by Edouard Vallet. With his engraving press behind him… so human!
Valais, more than a land
“Hays in the mountains”, etching on zinc (1913)
Edouard Vallet/Ed. To the sheep
Edouard Vallet’s Valais is a hardworking Valais. Haymaking, washing, cutting trees, mowing. Pious and resistant in the face of death, this Valais also knows how to live… in peace. Meloncholy. Sometimes even happy! But among all these traits, we will not know which attracted the discreet Vallet, barricaded in his “love of mystery”. There is no writing, nothing, except the date of a first stay in 1908 in Hérémence. “At the beginning of the 20th century”, writes Jean-Charles Giroud, “there is nothing less original for a Genevan painter than going to work in the summer in Valais”. However, the artist will make a difference by capturing the fierce and primitive soul coming from the heights of his adopted canton. Critics from all over Switzerland notice him, he exhibits, the Confederation buys and… it is in this positive spiral that the painter also reconnects with his first love: engraving.
Engraving: a profession of faith
“Procession”, etching from 1911 on a theme often treated by the artist.
Edouard Vallet/Ed. To the sheep
It was at the age of 15 that the Geneva native began his career as a wood engraver, copying the old masters while enrolled at the School of Industrial Arts. Once he acquired the profession, Edouard Vallet will move away from the practice of food and establish himself as an artist. And once he held his first solo exhibition at the age of 23, he was launched, his talent recognized and constantly diversified until his last lithograph, produced a year before his death. In addition to his works, Vallet received orders as an illustrator (including humor), poster designer and stamp maker, one of which was issued in 1919.
Friendships at the top
“Portrait of CFRAMuz”, etching (1920).
Edouard Vallet/Ed. To the sheep
If the Valais painter Edmond Bille speaks of the withdrawn Edouard Vallet as a “badly polished bear”, this character did not prevent the artist not only from being acclaimed by the Swiss scene but also from integrating into it. . He put his talent in particular at the service of the pen of Edouard Rod but also of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz for whom he created the illustrations of “Jean-Luc persecuté” in 1920 without the two men having ever met.
Geneva: the galley is in fashion
Lithograph for “LAlbum Genevois” depicting Ruelle des Tanneurs published in 1901.
Edouard Vallet/Ed. To the sheep
Vallet did not only bring humble and ordinary people to light in his art. When he started in Geneva, he was also hungry. But, according to the testimony of her sister, “with confidence in her good fortune that no trial will be able to dampen her courage”. Who was rewarded with numerous commissions including the one for “L’album genevois” imagined by the Journal de Genève in 1901, a collective work that collects views of the city.
The women appear
The poster of the «Zurich Valais Week» from 1927
Edouard Vallet/Ed. To the sheep
Commercial, made to order or an invitation to come and discover one of his exhibitions, Edouard Vallet’s posters have a point in common that has nothing to do with the way of saying things, but perhaps with the art to be made! In an entire chapter of his work, Jean-Charles Giroud directs our gaze towards this characteristic: very often it is women that the artist highlights.
“Edouard Vallet”, Jean-Charles Giroud, bilingual French-German work, two-volume box set. Ed. Until Schaap.
Read alsoFlorence Millioud he entered the cultural section in 2011 out of passion for men of culture, after having dealt with local politics and economics since 1994. An art historian, he collaborates in the drafting of exhibition catalogs and monographic works on the artists.More information
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2024-01-21 18:59:29
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