India Ink. On wove paper. 49 x 67 cm. , the full sheet.
With a second composition on the reverse: "Eléments cruciformes" (Thévoz 2735v). [KT].
- Unrecognized during his lifetime, Soutter only received posthumous acclaim as one of the most important representatives of Art Brut. - His radical work, characterized by extreme subjective and existential feelings, is considered a spectacular discovery.
• Soutter chose Christ as a figure of pain and redemption for this strong biographical metaphor. - Soutter's ecstatic finger painting of enigmatic shadow figures from his final creative phase is considered his most sought-after work - Comparable works can be found in significant international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris..
LITERATURE: Michel Thévoz, Louis Soutter, vol. II: Catalogue de l'œuvre, Lausanne 1976, no. 2735r and 2735v (illustrated). - - Galerie Kornfeld Auctions, Bern, Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts - Part I, June 16, 2006, lot 140 (illustrated).

Louis Soutter / Arnulf Rainer - Terra Incognita, Galerie Knoell, Basel, November 20, 2015 - February 5, 2016, no. 12 (illustrated)

Dr. A. Hassler Collection, Aarau. From a Swiss collection

Soutter's biography is marked by discontinuity, change, disruption, and extreme circumstances. Unrecognized during his lifetime and working in artistic isolation, he is now considered one of the most important representatives of Art Brut, a term first coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1945. With his radical and deeply subjective imagery, his oeuvre was initially only recognized and supported by a few people during his lifetime, among them his cousin Le Corbusier and the writer Jean Giono. Soutter's tragic life is a compelling and disturbing testimony to the failure of bourgeois conventions. Initially, he studied engineering, then switched to architecture, which he completed, only to devote himself to the violin. Nevertheless, Soutter soon gave up his study of music to attend various art and painting classes, first in Lausanne and then in Paris. In 1897, he emigrated to Colorado Springs with the violinist Magde Fursman, who would soon become his wife. There, he became head of the newly founded Art Department at Colorado College. However, this apparent stability in Soutter's life was short-lived and soon ended in a break. It is a story of both private and professional failure in the making. He divorced his wife in 1903 and resigned from the college's board of trustees. Soutter returned to Switzerland as a broken man and barely managed to keep his head above water by taking on odd jobs, living beyond his means, and at the expense of his family. Soutter was eventually placed under the legal guardianship of his family and was admitted to a Swiss nursing home in 1923. Soutter spent nineteen years until he died in the authoritarian institution in Ballaigues, where he brought his very own artistic world to life in isolation. An almost physical intensity characterizes his finger paintings from the late 1930s; their vibrant surfaces seem to come directly from the artist's soul. As a tool of direct emotional transmission, his hands become part of this intense physical, creative process. His black figures emerge like apparitions, rendered in an ecstatic quality palpable to the viewer. “Personnage nimbé et assis” foregrounds a figure reminiscent of Christian Pietà depictions, coarse, reduced, shadowy, yet full of emotional intensity. It refers to a central metaphor in Soutter's work: Christ as a symbol of pain, suffering, and redemption, which is closely connected to Soutter's biography. [KT]

Condition report on request katalogisierung@kettererkunst.de