Aloïse. Le ricochet solaire

Interned for schizophrenia in 1918, the Vaudoise Aloïse Corbaz, known as Aloïse (1886-1964), was thirty-two years old when she severed ties with her past. Once a seamstress, governess to children at the Potsdam court, and an anti-militarist, she withdrew from the world, carrying with her fragments of a vast biblical, literary, and musical culture. Her delusion gradually took shape through writing, painting, and drawing. For over forty years, she would produce an immense body of work, projecting it like a richly colored cloak onto ever-expanding surfaces, from the pages of a sketchbook to paper rolls several meters long.

Designed as a journey into the artist’s world, the exhibition at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts appealed to our senses, captivated by Aloïse’s drawings, and to our imagination, inviting us on a voyage into the heart of human thought. It was a unique opportunity to discover a dense, complex world, erotic and lavishly populated with flowers, animals, emperors, queens, and opera singers.

Organized on the occasion of the publication of the electronic catalogue raisonné of Aloïse’s work, available online, compiled by Jacqueline Porret-Forel and Céline Muzelle, this extensive retrospective brought together more than 160 works, offering a concise overview of the artist’s different creative periods. The exhibition, made possible through exceptional loans from numerous Swiss and European collectors, was supported by the Kunstmuseum of Solothurn. It presented a wide selection of the artist’s works from the cantonal collections.