Félix Vallotton. Idylle am Abgrund

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), born in Lausanne, later living in Paris, is known for his illustrations and woodcuts, whose bold manner of expression he transferred to his paintings. Even as a 27-year-old, he created a furor in Paris with ‘Le bain au soir d’été’ (1892/93). Vallotton is often assigned to the French group of artists the Nabis – and yet he remains a fascinating individual figure. The exhibition in the Kunsthaus curated by Linda Schädler and Christoph Becker included some 90 works. And yet no wide-ranging retrospective had been aimed at; the intention was rather to base the show on a subjective selection. The criterion for choice was originality and eccentricity, which, according to the curator duo, was what bound Vallotton to modernity. Certainly, Vallotton’s nudes, portraits, landscapes, still lifes and interiors might seem to be traditionally thematic, but behind the façade of his painterly conventionality, which is as if viewed through bulletproof glass, there is always something concealed. The title of the exhibition, ‘Idylls by the Abyss’, suggests precisely that. Among the motifs, one emphasis of the exhibition was on the nude paintings. Indeed, Vallotton’s female figures were so overdrawn, their physical features so excessive, that he irritated not only his contemporaries. His nudes – young women were not permitted to enter his first exhibitions – can still annoy people. ‘Vallotton, hater or admirer of women?’ the critic Maria Becker then asked in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. She called the artist’s unsparing view of the female body ‘dissecting’ and ‘desiring’ at the same time. The poses are unusual, the skin has a strange color, the proportions diverge far from the ideal, and he doesn’t beautify coarseness. Barbara Basting admired how the abnormal, freaky, and threatening became visible in the work of Vallotton in this exhibition (Tages-Anzeiger). Gerhard Mack described Vallotton as an artist with a ‘camera in his brain,’ and one who cuts out, collages and remounts (Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung). The exhibition was described as ‘beautifully staged’ (NZZ).