KOLLER VIEW 2/24

pre view. 02 9 In his ownworld: Louis Soutter Preview of the Swiss Art auction on 21 June 2024 Louis Soutter’s life can be seen as a balancing act be- tween dream and reality, between genius and mad- ness. Before Soutter turned to the visual arts, he first studied architecture, then music. His Brussels violin teacher Eugène Ysaÿe introduced him to contemporary painting. Soutter received artistic training in Lausanne, Geneva, Brussels and Paris. In 1897, he and his wife Madge Fursman moved to the United States, where he taught at Colorado Springs College. After a rupture with both his spouse and his career in 1902/03, the reasons for which remain unclear, Sout- ter returned to Switzerland. His eccentric and erratic lifestyle prompted his family to place him in a hospice in Ballaigues in the Swiss Jura in 1923. There he con- tinued to paint, but from 1937 onwards, progressive arthritis and increasing visual impairment caused him more and more problems. This situation also manifest- 1 Louis Soutter (1871–1942). Allons à l'aventure. 1937–42. Mixed media on paper. 58 × 44 cm. Estimate: CHF 150 000/200 000 2 Louis Soutter (1871–1942). Lutte avec le Démon. 1938–39. Mixed media on paper. 57.5 × 44 cm. Estimate: CHF 200 000/300 000 2 ed itself in his art, which was extremely different from his earlier work. In inverse proportion to his physical decline, Louis Soutter embarked on an extremely creative artistic phase that lasted until his death in 1942. During these years, he applied colour with his fingers, creating ex- pressive pictorial worlds animated by gesticulating, demonic-looking figures. It often seems as if Soutter is trying to break out of the isolation of the institution with his figures. The dynamism of his depictions, which fill the entire format and often extend beyond the edges of the picture, stands in stark contrast and tension to the ever-shrinking radius of his own movements. Over the years in Ballaigues, Soutter ' s art became more obsessive, more impulsive, at times even decon- structivist. With his poetic titles – such as ‘Love is a silk thread that you either tie or cut’ – he provides a kind of literary meta-level to his pictorial art. Soutter ' s work would probably have gone unnoticed had it not been for his famous cousin Le Corbusier, the writer Jean Giono and the artists René Auberjonois and Jean Dubuffet, who publicised and posthumously promoted his work. Soutter ' s painting largely defies categorisation; instead, he operates in his own cosmos of barely decipherable gestures and signs. In exhibitions and publications, art historical research has devoted itself to Soutter ' s com- plex and paradox-driven work, ‘which emerged from an almost autistic retreat into the personal, but precisely because of this became highly receptive to the vibra- tions of the most avant-garde movements of the 20 th century’. (Michel Thévoz) For further information Swiss Art Laura Koller & Cyril Koller lkoller@kollerauctions.com Online Catalogues www.kollerauctions.com