In the last years of his life, from 1936, Louis Soutter (1871-1942) drew with his fingers on large sheets of paper, using oil paints which lent themselves better to this practice than the ink which he used before. Before coming to these terrible works, we must remember that, born in Morges (Switzerland), in a bourgeois family, Soutter studied architecture in Geneva, then the violin with Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels, then painting in Switzerland and in Paris and lived in the United States, in Colorado Springs, from 1897 to 1903.
When he returned, his physical and mental health deteriorated, even though he earned his living as a violinist in Geneva and Lausanne orchestras until 1922. His excessive lifestyle prompted his family to place him under guardianship and then, in 1922 , to have him committed to a clinic. The following year he was transferred to a hospice in Ballaigues, an isolated village in the Vaudois Jura. Nineteen years later, he died there, almost blind and malnourished – nineteen years of drawing.
First the ink: on bad recovered papers, he reveals scenes populated by figures in strange positions, rickety architecture, fascinated faces. Initially considered laughable, these difficult-to-interpret works began to gain interest in the 1930s, partly thanks to the action of one of his cousins, Le Corbusier (1887-1965). An exhibition takes place in the United States and the surrealist review Minotaur published in 1936 some images accompanied by a text by the architect. The first finger works appeared at the same time. Until then, Soutter’s graphic style was characterized by the abundance of lines, hatching streaking the surfaces, redoubled or tangled lines. Allusions to the history of painting are sometimes distinct.
Thick black
Nothing like that anymore: radical simplification wins everything. Its first consequence is seen upon entering the gallery. The preceding Soutters must be looked at closely, being saturated with signs which seem compressed against each other, as if the sheet were too small to accommodate them all.
From now on, they can be seen from afar: naked or clothed human silhouettes, uniformly black, with simplified contours, stand out clearly on the paper, although it is stained with prints made with the tips of the fingers. These bodies are sometimes alone, in the center, sometimes arranged in a frieze. The solitaires are immobile, the friezes in movement. A few rare works only show one or more faces.
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