Félix Vallotton

Felix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss and French artist and graphic artist, illustrator and master of engraving, who joined the Nabis group (translated from the Hebrew “Prophets”) when the groups work was in full bloom.

He was born in Swiss Lausanne into the family of notary Protestant Arman Adrien Vallotton and Louise Roseng, the daughter of a baker.

Wood engravings (woodcut) in the masterful performance of Vallotton were very widely known. A diversely gifted artist worked in the genres of landscape and still life, interior and portrait, created a series of “nu”, close in style to Art Nouveau, and also wrote several novels and plays.

In 1927, in the homeland of the artist (during his lifetime, he was not much appreciated there), large commemorative exhibitions were held (Lausanne, Bern), and, in the exposition of 1938 in Zurich, the organizers presented almost 350 works by an outstanding master.

Key Ideas:

– Felix Vallotton tried to capture the spirit of his time on the canvases. He is attracted by people, the crowd in motion, scenes that can be seen on the street or in the park. The motive of the crowd was the strongest impression for the artist who came from the Swiss province.

– Deformed and blurred features of characters’ faces, scale planes of pure local color, schematic figures and objects – those are the features that were the image principle for all Nabis artists and embodied in the works of Vallotton.

– Just like his fellow artists, Vallotton uses a special arrangement of the canvas space – a view from above or, on the contrary, a view from below, sometimes connecting different points of observation in one composition. At the same time, the space is not considered an objectively existing reality with certain principles of geometry, but is subordinated to the imagination of the artist. The perspective is also transformed – it is agile and changeable.

– F. Vallotton’s attention is drawn to various aspects of urban life, both extraordinary and quite ordinary. The multi-figure compositions of the master are squeezed into vertically elongated rectangles. At the same time, straight lines limiting the composition sometimes quite mercilessly “cut” details and characters, as if leaving a part of objects and figures behind the scenes.