Louis Soutter

Louis Soutter ( born June 4, 1871 in Morges, † February 20, 1942 in Ballaigues; actually Louis -Adolphe Soutter ) was a Swiss painter, cousin of the architect Le Corbusier. He is one of the most important representatives of Art Brut.

Life

Soutter was the son of a pharmacist, his mother was the great-aunt of the architect Charles Edouard Jeanneret (better known as " Le Corbusier "). He began first at the University of Lausanne to study engineering, but broke it off in favor of studying architecture in Geneva. Even this he did not finish, but moved to Brussels to the Royal Conservatoire, where he among other things, at the violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe received instruction. He completed his musical studies also not decrease, but instead he went the end of 1894 to return to Switzerland to take lessons in drawing and painting. He then traveled to Paris to painting studies. In 1897 he moved to Colorado Springs (USA). There he married Madge Fursman.

At Colorado College Soutter became head of the newly founded art department. In 1903 it came to the divorce from his wife, and to the resignation of the College line. Soutter returned to Switzerland, came in 1908 in the Symphony Orchestra of Lausanne a ( line from 1910: Ernest Ansermet ). 1915 moved to Soutter Symphony Geneva. Then he led a lavish lifestyle, but this could not fund and for a long time showed increasing behavioral problems, he was forcibly placed under guardianship.

Louis Soutter took on multiple tours as a musician through Switzerland, but increasingly vagabond. 1923-52 years old - was Soutter against his will, but with the consent of his family, trained by his guardian in a retirement home in Vaud village Ballaigues. He moved in this last phase of life to drawing and painting, had contact with the artist René Auberjonois. From about 1937 Soutter began with finger painting, sometimes downright using the entire body. When his cousin Le Corbusier, with whom he had further contact, this activity met with incomprehension and rejection. 71- year Soutter died psycho- emotionally isolated in the home.

Hermann Hesse wrote about him the poem Louis Soutter, in which the fracture is described by the learned correct Technique as:. Incorrectly, not nice, but true / time I with ink and blood, male true. Truth is terrible.

Quotes

• "Look, the shadows and lights on this paper, I do not do anything else than to interpret them, and the result is my drawing. "
• " Do not draw houses and roofs on, but the emptiness between them. "