Alice Bailly

Self-Portrait (1917) on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Alice Bailly (born February 25, 1872 in Geneva , † January 1, 1938 in Lausanne ) was an avant-garde Swiss painter and shaped the areas of Fauvism , Cubism and Futurism in the early 20th century . What fascinated her so much about these styles of painting were intense colors, dark contours and the unrealistic representation of the human body, as well as the use of spaces.

Life

Childhood and education

While largely spending her childhood in Geneva, Bailly took several separate courses for women at the École des beaux Arts . From 1890 to 1891 she was a student of the artists Hugues Bovy (1841-1903) and Denise Sarkissof, under whom she studied at the École d'Art in Geneva. A scholarship abroad enabled her to study in Munich for a year .

Bailly in Paris

When she moved to Paris in 1904, she initially joined artists from the field of Cubism, including Albert Gleizes , Jean Metzinger , Marie Laurencin and Sonia Lewitska, although this did not yet have any visible influence on her work. Between 1904 and 1910 Bailly was influenced by the Fauvist avant-garde . She gained increasing interest in landscape paintings, which depicted the most famous artists of Fauvism in a playful way, but also used simplified forms and two-dimensional compositions. Above all, she was fascinated by the use of bright and non-naturalistic colors, in which the Fauvists tried to differentiate themselves from the Impressionists. As early as 1908, her Fauvist-inspired paintings hung in the Salon d'Automne alongside other Fauvist artists. Her works were regularly exhibited there until 1926. Her career peaked shortly before the outbreak of the First World War , when Bailly professed her avant-garde position, which gave her the opportunity to meet the cosmopolitan circles around Guillaume Apollinaire and his magazine Les Soirées de Paris , Sonia and Robert Delaunay , Kees van Dongen and many others to join others.

Bailly in Switzerland

When the First World War broke out, Bailly was already in Switzerland . She was forced to stay there and make new contacts in the arts, as her popularity was mainly limited to France . Bailly initially found her stay to be isolating and her audience to be far less interested in art than in Paris, as her circle of friends in her Geneva studio, La Roulette , consisted mainly of poets. So she stayed mostly in the vicinity of collectors and patrons and often traveled to Basel , Zurich and Winterthur . From 1916 onwards, Bailly developed an increasing interest in the Kunstverein von Winterthur, which was already headed in 1907 by a board who planned the construction of another museum building and was open to modern and French art. Bailly contacted the board and proposed an exhibition of her work in its art museum. As a result, she was involved in eleven group exhibitions between 1917 and 1930. Particular attention was paid to the exhibition in the spring of 1917, in which Bailly's works were shown as well as those of other Swiss artists, and an exhibition in March 1919 in which 26 of Bailly's own works were exhibited. Both moved into the limelight and became part of controversial art conversations.

Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser

Arthur Hahnloser (1870–1936) and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler (1873–1952) were passionate collectors who Bailly got to know due to their active participation in the then Winterthur art scene through their role as advocates of many artists and through Arthur's membership on the board of the Kunstverein would have. Above all, they promoted post-impressionist artists . Although Bailly's works were not an integral part of the couple's collection, she developed a close relationship with them and was counted among their friends. Between 1918 and 1930 she frequently visited the Villa Flora - an art museum that was left behind by the couple and which was already equipped with some works of art, mostly from Switzerland and France , and which now shows Swiss and French paintings. The works exhibited there are supposed to maintain the atmosphere created by Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser back then. Bailly's works were partly inspired by it, such as E.g. the tableau-Laine La bergère et son jardin from 1919, which depicts the Hahnloser's daughter, Lisa Hahnloser, surrounded by goats in the garden. The painting Le concert dans le jardin from 1920 is intended to commemorate an afternoon that Bailly had spent in the garden of Villa Flora.

Werner Reinhart

In June 1918 Bailly met Werner Reinhart . He represented an important person in her circle of friends in Winterthur and proved to be a reliable patron who promoted her artistic work. But her relationship with him was not only related to her career - Bailly also bonded with him on a private level: He also shared her enthusiasm for modern literature and music and opened her way to a circle of musicians and composers, including Arthur Honegger and Igor Stravinsky and Frank Martin , who were also supported by him. She also admired his sensitivity and discovered in him her great love, which he did not reciprocate. Her unrequited love influenced her until shortly before her death; until then she had written him numerous letters.

Bailly in Lausanne

In 1923 Bailly moved to Lausanne where she spent the rest of her life. She continued to exhibit there regularly and sponsored artists of modern art. In 1936 she accepted the contract to complete eight murals for the foyer of the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne . However, this assignment led to a weakening, which probably made her susceptible to tuberculosis , of which she then died two years later on January 1, 1938.

Services

Bailly's Contribution to the Development of Fauvism

In her painting, Alice Bailly initially turned to Fauvism, which only referred to her stay in Paris. The elements of Fauvist painting included, among other things, the simplification of forms, which gave a painting sustainability, since these are only limited to the essentials. So a painting does not give a fleeting impression, as is the case with an impressionist painting. For Bailly, as for other Fauvist-oriented artists, this was decisive for their departure from Impressionism and for their motivation to break with its old conventions. Fauvism, however, only reflected an experimental phase in art history, in which many artists tried to turn away from past styles such as impressionism and realism and, contrary to tradition, give the paintings more sustainability.

Bailly's development of abstract art

Between 1907 and 1909 the group of Fauvist-oriented artists disbanded again. Bailly too turned away from Fauvism in 1910 and focused on a pre-existing style of painting commonly known as the beginning of abstract art: Cubism . With the help of simple geometric shapes, the representation is broken up and the shape splintered. However, Bailly was not only inspired by Cubism, but also by Futurism , which is not only characterized by the purely cubist dissolution of form, but also by the attempt to depict successive sequences of movements in a single picture. Under the influence of these two styles of painting, Bailly developed a new, own form of cubism : her painting "Equestrian Fantasy with Pink Lady" (exhibited in 1913 at the Strunskaja Gallery in Zurich) is characterized, for example, by the depiction of rhythmic movements on the one hand, but on the other also by dividing the representation into flat and colored areas. On the one hand, this painting contains the characteristics of Futurism , in that Bailly depicts rhythmic movements within a painting, which, on the other hand, are also divided into flat surfaces in a cubist way. The use of both styles and the use of unrealistic colors characterize the radicalism of Bailly's work. But she also combined oil paints with colored paper, a bronze background, glass beads and felt. These combinations were currently considered uncommon, but were distinctive for Bailly's painting.

Works (selection)

backyard

• Paysage Urbain (originated in the 19th and 20th centuries)
• En Valais (created between 1904 and 1906)
• Dancers (created in 1912)
• Equestrian Fantasy with Pink Lady (created in 1913 in the Strunskaja Gallery in Zurich )
• Fantaisie équestre (created in 1914)
• Bouquet de fleur (created in 1916)
• Self Portrait (made in 1917; exhibited at the National Museum of Women Arts )
• Rainbow
• Joy in the woods (created in 1922)
• Reclining (created between 1923 and 1926; exhibited in the Otten Art Museum)
• The Family (created in 1925)
• Fleurs dans la nuit (created in 1931)
• Jeune femme à la perruque blanche (created in 1932)
• Ponts de Paris (created in 1933; exhibited 1968/69 in the Musée cantonal des beaux-arts Lausanne)

literature

• Alice Bailly, works 1908–1923, Rosemarie Schwarzwaelder / Galerie next St. Stephan (ed.) Vienna, 1985. Catalog for the exhibitions in the galleries: Galerie Krinzinger - Innsbruck, Galerie next St. Stephan - Vienna, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau 1985 Text by Paul-Andre Jaccard.
• Paul-André Jaccard: Bailly, Alice. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Web links

Commons : Alice Bailly  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Paul-André Jaccard: Bailly, Alice Marie Louise. In: Sikart
• Alice Bailly's biography in the eMuseum of the ZHdK Zurich
• Publications by and about Alice Bailly in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alice Bailly in the National Museum of Women in the Arts
2. ↑ Alice Bailly (1872–1938) ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Alice Bailly
4. ↑ Alice Bailly as guest at Villa Flora
5. ↑ Fauvism ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Cubism
7. ↑ Futurism
8. ↑ Alice Bailly and her own way of combining Cubism and Futurism
9. ↑ Alice Bailly at the Aargauer Kunsthaus (PDF; 6.2 MB)
10. ↑ Alice Bailly: Short Biography  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ rainbow