Charles Blanc-Gatti. The Colours of Sound

The Lausanne artist Charles Blanc-Gatti (1890 – 1966) experimented repeatedly to create correspondences between sounds and colours, from pictorial transpositions to dynamic lighting effects for the stage to animated films. All his works had one aim, to stimulate and enrich our sensory perceptions.

Charles Blanc-Gatti was drawn to music and the visual arts from a very young age. He was also born with ‘colour and geometric synaesthesia’. That is, sounds in his mind were inextricably linked to colours and shapes. Hearing one he would instantly see the others. An amateur violinist and painter, he had no formal academic training.

The exhibition Les couleurs du son (The Colours of sound) focuses on four key moments in the artist’s career.

In 1931, while living in Paris, Blanc-Gatti put together an exhibition that featured some 50 abstract artworks. These were pictorial transpositions of visions that had been triggered in his mind as he listened to classical music compositions. In 1932 he cofounded the Association des artistes musicalistes (Association of Musicalist Artists) with Henry Valensi, Gustave Bourgogne, and Vito Stracquadaini, three painters who shared his belief in the supremacy of music over all the other arts.

Blanc-Gatti later became interested in new techniques of lighting design for the stage. He created dynamic lighting in which coloured lighting effects were projected and synchronised with sound. He also experimented with fluorescent paint.

L’Orchestre – 2e version is a painting that synthesises his concept of the chromophonic spectacle; it provides a key to reading the vibratory correspondences Blanc-Gatti saw between sounds and colours. Back in Switzerland in late 1936, the artist continued his experiments in the field of film and produced a 1939 experimental animated film called Chromophonie.

Multiple factors probably triggered Blanc-Gatti’s visions. Dazzling light – whether natural or spiritual – generates ecstatic moments that he would depict in his landscapes of the Lake Geneva region and the Alps of the Valais, as well as in his religious painting.

Exhibition curator: Catherine Lepdor, chief curator, MCBA, with the assistance of Camille de Alencastro, research associate, MCBA