Elvezia Michel-Baldini

Elvezia Michel (born August 17, 1887 in Lisieux , Calvados / Normandy , France ; † June 14, 1963 in the Flin Hospital near Soglio , Bergell , Switzerland ) was a Swiss painter , draftsman , book illustrator , weaver and philanthropist , whose main artistic works were The period between 1902 and 1915 was only made known to the contemporary public in 1993, thirty years after her death.

Life

Michel grew up in a wealthy family in which the previous generations on his mother's side had built a three-story house in Borgonovo in Bergell , the valley of the Giacomettis , with savings from confectioners and coffee shops . As a child, Michel first lived in Lisieux, where his parents had emigrated to run a confectionery with his father's brother, and when they returned to Switzerland, from the age of 7 in Davos ( Graubünden ), the father's place of origin, the two years later, in 1896, died. She first completed school in Davos, and in 1902/1903 she attended the girls' boarding school in Aarburg . It was in this environment that Michel's artistic talent was discovered, promoted and trained from then on. At the age of 17, Elvezia Michel took drawing and painting lessons from autumn 1904 to spring 1905 with a locally known portrait painter in the vicinity of the northern Italian art academy Brera ( Milan ) and then lived alternately in Lisieux, Davos and Borgonovo. This was followed by an intensive artistic phase in western European metropolises: Michel was enrolled at the women's academy of the Munich Artists ' Association from 1907 to 1910 , from 1910 to 1912 she lived in Paris , where she presumably studied at the Académie Ranson , and in the winter of 1912/1913 she attended courses the Central School of Arts and Crafts ( London ). She was then married from 1914 to 1930 to Giuseppe Mascarini, her first drawing teacher ten years her senior, and lived in Milan, where she regularly attended La Scala and the theater. Michel spent most of the summer months in her mother's house in Bergell, until she moved her center of life to Borgonovo in 1930. Her divorce process dragged on for four years.

Michel spent the next 33 years of her life in Borgonovo. When she was in her mid-40s she learned her new profession of art weaving in the class of art weaver Schulthess in Ascona (early 1930s). Michel-Baldini set up a weaving workshop in her mother's house, who only died in 1951 at the age of 87. For her work she used linen from her own flax fields on Alp Pila near Maloja and wool from the Bergell region. She cultivated artist friendships in particular with the painter Hanny Bay (1885–1978) from Bern and with the artist and singer Emilia Gianotti (1901–1984) from Stampa. Michel lived very close to nature and in close contact with the valley inhabitants. She was also musically gifted (she played keyboard instruments and guitar and sang soprano). She grew up multilingual, with Bergell and Engadine dialects as well as Swiss German, and was also proficient in French, Italian, German and English. Until she was old, she would occasionally visit her older sister Anna in Davos for long periods of time. Michel was 76 years old.

plant

The graphic and painterly oeuvre of Michel-Baldini, brought to light in 1991, comprises around 25 oil paintings, 70 watercolors and 700 sketches. At this point in time her weaving work of later years was already known, including a tapestry “La vraie Religion” from 1943 (99 × 75 cm), on which a female figure with wings can be seen in a neat oval, raised in her left hand holds an open book and looks into it ( Ciäsa Granda , Stampa ).

Michel's work ranges in portraiture from subtle, reserved character studies of the first few years through psychologically trained portraits and nude painting (Munich around 1910) to time-critical, expressionist-looking depictions of people, which are often inspired by the stage arts of their time in Paris. Her techniques are varied and, in addition to works in red chalk and oil, there are also watercolors, from which impressive portraits of women emerge. Also, in ink on paper, distinctive Salomé illustrations in preliminary drawings and final versions have been preserved. In addition, Michel-Baldini dealt with bookbinding and book decoration, for which she drew from a large repertoire of shapes and motifs (in London partly inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites ). Around 1915 Michel-Baldini was working on the painting of the small hall ("saletta") of the maternal house in Borgonovo, which was mainly designed with female figures and partly in large-format gouaches made of rich color plots.

The artist's multifaceted oeuvre awaits a scientific analysis.

Retrospective exhibitions

• 1993 Ciäsa Granda, Stampa ("Elvezia Michel")
• 2003 Hotel Laudinella, St. Moritz ("Elvezia Michel")
• 2004 Ciäsa Granda, Stampa ("Giuseppe Mascarini e Elvezia Michel. Un incontro artistico fra Milano e la Bregaglia all'inizio del Novecento")

swell

• Dora Lardelli: A talent seeks tirelessly. On the work of Elvezia Michel. In: Kulturarchiv Oberengadin , Samedan (ed.): Elvezia Michel 1887–1963. Verlag Bündner Monatsblatt, Chur, ISBN 3-906343-04-0 , pp. 20–24. (Also catalog for the exhibition "Elvezia Michel" in the Ciäsa Granda, Stampa, Bergell, June 1 to October 1, 1993)
• Dora Lardelli: On the trail of a cosmopolitan woman. Biography of Elvezia Michel 1887–1963. In: ibid. Pp. 13-15.
• Andrea Tognina: Elvezia Michel: La riscoperta di un'artista. In: La Scarìza: periodico d'informazione, cultura, animazione. Associazione la Scarìza. Brusio; [poi] Poschiavo: La Scarìza, ottobre 1993, p. 13.