Alois Wey

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Alois Wey (born July 9, 1894 in Murg ; † May 25, 1985 in Wittenbach SG ) was a Swiss draftsman. As a trained roofer , he turned to painting when he was over eighty. His castles, palaces, cathedrals and imaginary dwellings designed on paper are assigned to the Art Brut .

Life

Alois Wey was the oldest of seven children and grew up with his grandmother. In winter, the father's roofing job did not secure the family's livelihood. His mother therefore had to supplement the family income as a washerwoman and seamstress , just as Wey himself had to contribute to the family's livelihood since he was ten. He spent his little evening free time drawing.

In the First and Second World War he did his active service as a patrolman and porter. In his working life he was not only active as a roofer, but also as an overhead line fitter, miner , bricklayer's assistant and panel layer in an Eternit factory. At the age of 72 he took up a job in the kitchen of the station buffet in Zurich as a dishwasher . The Switzerland he left only once in the Principality of Liechtenstein to work as Hilfsmineur.

In his younger years he was seen as impatient, quick-tempered and irascible, but also as hands-on at work. He looked back with pride on the fact that he repeatedly interrupted the times of unemployment - which he had gotten into due to his addiction to drink - and finally overcame them at the age of 62 with the help of the Blue Cross .

After he had finished his working life, he moved to the Stein retirement home in Toggenburg and in 1974 to the “Kappelhof” in Wittenbach . Here he began to draw again at the age of eighty - after an interruption of decades. He produced the works created in the old people's home in sessions of up to ten hours. He made sure to work on the same image at the same time. He only interrupted his work for the meals and inhalations required by his asthma . He spent about a month on each of his paintings.

plant

Wey's work consists of drawings of castles , palaces , churches and other imaginative buildings that he executed with colored pencils . He increased the luminosity of the colors by underlaying them with gold, silver and copper bronze. It was important to him that his buildings should be in line with the rules. Initially, his buildings stood in real landscapes, later these disappeared and were only preserved in the "vistas". None of his drawings, neither in the composition, in the colors nor in the motifs, are like any other. With a few exceptions, there are no people in his pictures.

The Weys plant can be divided into five phases:

  1. The works of the first phase are small-format drawings of buildings made with colored pencils and often with names in Wey's own orthography . Grand Hottel , Palazzo-del-Parlamentio and Ch'LeerinsTiduT in Ankara are examples. Here, delicate shades of dark blue, violet, dark red, yellow, orange, light and dark green predominate. Wey emphasized support elements or archways with silver bronze. Existing gate entrances often lead to nothing and then remain white. On the other hand, he only used gold bronze cautiously for the sun or reflections on the roofs. In the window areas he already placed up to three colors on top of or next to each other.
  2. In the second phase, the filling of the windows often seems to be very pointillistic . Blue takes a back seat in favor of red and the proportion of gold bronze used increases. The first church towers appear and the colors retain their delicate character.
  3. In the third phase, the colors become even brighter. Wey combines several similar buildings - such as palaces and basilicas - to form larger building complexes. The window surfaces and especially the surfaces of the archways are now often given a checked pattern.
  4. In the fourth phase, the compositions are larger in size and the groupings of buildings are more frequent. At the same time, Wey is expanding the number of colors to include pink, light blue and lemon yellow. He also used copper bronze for the arches and minarets . He decorated the edges of the drawings with black ink. Wey also used all of the motifs and colors from the earlier drawings in the large formats.
  5. In the final fifth phase, Wey returns to smaller formats, which are, however, larger than those of the first phase, which is not surprising given the advanced age of Weys and his dwindling workforce. The bright colors remain and there is no loss of quality. Wey explained this with the fact that he was more experienced and used the colors more consciously, which also explains the intense glow of his drawings. The surfaces are painted more evenly and the pointillism of earlier drawings has almost completely disappeared.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions
Group exhibitions
  • 1982/1983: "Art around Lake Constance - naive painting - naive?", Singen / Htw., Saulgau, Bregenz, St. Gallen
  • 1983/1984: Galerie Bettie Thommen, Basel
  • 1984: "Realists of Longing", Kunstverein Olten
  • 2004: “Colorful is my favorite color”, Solothurn Art Museum

literature

  • Alois Wey. Ed. Josef John, Wittenbach 1985.
  • Guy Filippa: Alois Wey. In: Publications de la Collection de l'Art Brut 11th Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne 1982, pp. 38–51.
  • Gerd Presler : L'art brut: Art between genius and madness. - Cologne: DuMont, 1981, ISBN 3-7701-1307-1 , p. 146.
  • Simone Schaufelberger-Breguet: Alois Wey. In: Bild und Seele: about Art Brut and Outsider Art ( Kunstforum International. Volume 101). Cologne 1989, p. 162.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wey, Alois
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss roofer and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Murg
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1985
Place of death Wittenbach SG , Switzerland