François Barraud

François Barraud: The Atelier , 1928

François Barraud (born November 24, 1899 in La Chaux-de-Fonds , † September 11, 1934 in Geneva ) was a Swiss painter who is assigned to the New Objectivity .

biography

After completing an apprenticeship as a plasterer and painter, François-Emile Barraud attended evening courses for drawing and modeling at the École d'art appliqué in La Chaux-de-Fonds from 1911 . In 1922 he worked as a craftsman in Reims . In 1924 he moved to Paris to study at the Louvre . This was followed by stays in Reims, Leysin , Vevey and La Chaux-de-Fonds, until he settled in Geneva in 1931 , after a successful exhibition of his works at the Moos gallery there. His short life, characterized by serious illnesses (probably tuberculosis ), came to an end just three years later.

art

Barraud limited himself to a small circle of subjects. Interested in the real world, he sharpened his eye for the unspectacular, the everyday. Things should be presented in their simplicity and beauty. The artistic world invention was replaced by respect for reality. He mainly created portraits, including self-portraits and double portraits of himself and his wife, nudes, further still lifes and occasional landscapes. In his art, Barraud oriented himself towards the visible world and thus consciously turned away from the destruction of forms by the Expressionists or the anti-bourgeois attitude of the Dadaists . With precise drawings and clear, smoothly applied colors, he achieved an extreme degree of realism. Sober compositions emerged with a clear picture structure, factual, precise portrayals of people and often symbolically encrypted backgrounds.

Web links

Commons : François Barraud  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about François Barraud in the catalog of the German National Library
• Pierre-Jean Crittin: Barraud, François Emile. In: Sikart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New Objectivity in Switzerland , accessed on November 27, 2016.