Alexandre Perrier (1862-1936)

• Thu 19/03/09 - Sun 23/08/09
• Musée d'art et d'histoire| Rue Charles-Galland 2

The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire and the Kunstmuseum of Solothurn first collaborated on an exhibition dedicated to Genevan artist Alexandre Perrier in 1986. They have now renewed this partnership some twenty years later in order to further public knowledge of this artist, whose paintings are well represented in our museum. Alexandre Perrier (1862-1936) is one of the most eminent turn-of-the-century Swiss artists but also the one whose work remains perhaps the least studied today. His friends and acquaintances included Cuno Amiet, Albert Trachsel and Ferdinand Hodler; indeed, the latter’s paintings were exposed next to his own at the Vienna Secession of 1901 and the Exposition Universelle in Paris the previous year. By vocation a landscape painter, Perrier dedicated his entire life to the pictorial transposition of a restricted number of settings, including the Salève, Lake Geneva and Le Grammont, while searching to accurately render the light and atmosphere of these subjects. Influenced by Neo-Impressionism, he used a technique that deconstructed his strokes into small points and lines, stylistically situating him between pointillism and divisionism. In the second half of his career, Perrier’s style evolved towards a freer method that dissociated colour and drawing, confirming the originality and modernism of the artist’s approach.