Séraphine Louis

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Séraphine Louis

Séraphine Louis (born September 2, 1864 in Arsy (Oise), † December 11, 1942 in Clermont (Oise) ), also called Séraphine de Senlis , was a French painter. She is one of the most important representatives of naive art in France.

Life

Bouquet de fleurs , undated

Séraphine Louis was born as the youngest daughter of Antoine Frédéric Louis and Adeline Julie Mayard (or Maillard) in rural Arsy. The year after her birth, the mother died, in 1871 the father died. In the small town of Senlis (Oise) she earned her living as a shepherdess and cleaning lady, hence her pseudonym. She was a lay sister in the monastery of Senlis . Its discoverer and patron was the German art collector and art critic Wilhelm Uhde (1874–1947), who accidentally became aware of the withdrawn and poverty-stricken woman in 1912 when he was on vacation in Senlis and discovered one of her pictures there.

Uhde provided the painter with the large canvases that she needed for her paintings. For Séraphine Louis, painting was an act; her pictures were created in a trance , as it were . From 1930 onwards she began to suffer increasingly from symptoms of a presumably long-standing mental illness. She then squandered her money and her delusions reached such proportions that on February 15, 1932, she was admitted to the mental hospital in Clermont-sur-l'Oise. Séraphine Louis starved to death in 1942 at the age of 78, totally neglected due to the emergency provision for "lunatic asylums" ordered during the German occupation . She rests in a mass grave at the local cemetery .

plant

L'arbre de vie , 1928

Séraphine de Senlis, along with Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), is one of the most famous naive painters in France. She left behind an extensive work of mystical and religious imprint. The mostly abstract floral motifs tell of a strongly suggestive imagination. In 2008, the cultural historian Harald Keller established a connection between the colors used by Séraphine Louis and her intense, “psychedelic” imagery. Louis has been shown to work with highly toxic materials that are now subject to strict protection rules. Her tiny living room served as a studio, in which she also ate and slept. Corresponding symptoms of intoxication, which can cause illusions and delusions, can therefore be assumed.

The artist's first works acquired by Wilhelm Uhde were confiscated and sold during the First World War. Their location is not known. Museums that exhibit paintings by Séraphine de Senlis are the Charlotte Zander Museum in Bönnigheim with the largest collection of her works, as well as the Clemens Sels Museum Neuss and the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris ( The Red Tree , 1927/1928 ), the Musée Maillol in Paris, the Musée International d'Art Naif Anatole Jakovsky in Nice , the Musée du vieux-château in Laval , the Musée d'art in Senlis, the Musée d'art naïf in Béraut and the Musée d ' art naïf in Vicq . Further works are in private hands.

Exhibitions

Paintings by Séraphine de Senlis were already featured in various exhibitions on naive art during her lifetime, and after her death they were accepted as a French contribution to the Biennale in São Paulo . Other posthumous group exhibitions followed, and finally solo exhibitions.

  • 1929: Les peintres du coeur sacré , Paris, an initiative by Wilhelm Uhde
  • 1932: Les primitifs modern , Paris
  • 1937/1938: Les maîtres populaires de la réalité , Paris, Zurich, MOMA New York
  • 1942: Les primitifs du XXe siècle , Paris
  • 1945: first solo exhibition on the initiative of Wilhelm Uhde, Paris, Galerie de France
  • 1955: documenta 1 , Kassel , Séraphine Louis' works were included in the exhibition concept
  • 2008/2009: Séraphine de Senlis , Fondation Dina Vierny, Musée Maillol , Paris, solo exhibition from October 1, 2008 to May 15, 2009

Movies

literature

in order of appearance

  • Wilhelm Uhde: Cinq maîtres primitifs . Paris 1949.
  • Jean-Pierre Foucher: Séraphine de Senlis . Collection L'Œil du temps , Paris 1968.
  • Alain Vircondelet: Séraphine de Senlis . Collection “Une Vie”, Albin Michel, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-226-02702-5 .
  • Andrea Schweers: Séraphine Louis (1864–1942). Painter by the grace of Mary. In: Sibylle Duda, Luise F. Pusch (ed.): Wahnsinns-Frauen. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-38993-9 , pp. 39-70.
  • Harald Keller: Adjustments. The art world and its cleaning ladies. In: Barbara Kahlert, Rolf Spilker (ed.): The cleaning lady: from maid to cleaning lady; an exhibition by the Museum of Industrial Culture Osnabrück. Rasch, Bramsche 2008, ISBN 978-3-89946-112-1 , pp. 102-119.
  • Bertrand Lorquin, Wilhelm Uhde, Jan-Louis Derenne: Séraphine de Senlis . Exhibition catalog. Éditions Gallimard, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-07-012237-0 (also Fondation Dina Vierny, Musée Maillol, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-910826-51-2 ).
  • Françoise Cloarec: La vie rêvée de Séraphine de Senlis . Editions Phébus, 2008, ISBN 978-2-7529-0364-8 .
  • Alain Vircondelet: Séraphine: de la peinture à la folie . Albin Michel, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-226-18982-0 .
  • Hans Körner, Manja Wilkens: Séraphine Louis 1864–1942: Life and Work . Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-496-01405-8 .
  • Ulrich Tukur : The music box. Ullstein, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-550-08030-2 .
  • Corinne Boureau: Le souffle de l'ange. Séraphine de Senlis . Biographical novel. L'Harmattan, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-343-01966-6 .

Web links

Commons : Séraphine Louis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Probst: Séraphine Louis - France's great naive painter . GRIN Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-640-88485-8 ( google.de [accessed on March 1, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Nathalia Brodskaya: Naive Art . Parkstone International, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78310-340-9 ( google.de [accessed March 1, 2020]).
  3. ↑ H. Körner, M. Wilkens, A. Gautherie-Kampka: Seraphine Louis: 1864-1942 . Reimer, 2015, ISBN 978-3-496-01547-5 ( google.de [accessed on March 1, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Isabelle von Bueltzingsloewen: L'hecatombe des fous - la famine dans les hopitaux psychiatriques français sous l'occupation . Ed .: Flammarion. 2009, ISBN 978-2-08-122479-7 .
  5. ^ Marie-Jo Bonnet: Les femmes artistes dans les avant-gardes . Ed .: Editions Odile Jacob. Paris 2006, ISBN 978-2-7381-1732-8 , pp. 269 .
  6. ↑ Harald Keller: Adjustments - The art world and its cleaning women. In: Barbara Kahlert, Rolf Spilker (Hrsg.): The cleaning lady. From maid to cleaning lady. Exhibition catalog. Rasch, Bramsche 2008, pp. 102–119.
  7. ^ Séraphine Louis: The fantastic pictures of a waiting woman. Westdeutscher Rundfunk Cologne , July 26, 2014, archived from the original on August 10, 2014 ; accessed on December 11, 2017 (table of contents).
personal data
SURNAME Louis, Seraphine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Séraphine; Senlis, Séraphine de; De Senlis, Seraphine; Séraphine de Senlis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Arsy
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1942
Place of death Clermont