Louis Soutter – Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts | Lausanne

Original poster by the lithographer, printer, and publisher Charles Sauter, designed for the first retrospective of the work of Louis Soutter. An intense, indeed exceptionally captivating poster, no question; accordingly, the Swiss Confederation also awarded it as one of the 28 best posters of the year 1961. However, this is thanks more to Soutter’s stormy, drastic work (here an excerpt from his drawing created in the second half of the 1930s with his bare fingers and known today under the title «Composition. Cinq personnages») than to Sauter's design achievement. But well, yes, that is probably a bit too petty.

In any case, it remained Sauter's (1899–1969) only poster, as he was not active as a commercial graphic artist anyway. In 1925, he initially took over the management of the Simplon printing company in Lausanne (which emerged from the French-speaking branch of the Aarau printing firm Trüb & Cie.), before taking over the affiliate entirely and merging it in 1940 with a publishing house he co-founded that specialized in bibliophile editions.

Louis Soutter for his part (1871–1942), a cousin of Le Corbusier, was – as one might guess upon seeing the poster – as fascinating as he was tragic a figure. Enormously multi-talented and educated in various countries (engineering, architecture, violinist, painter), he emigrated to the United States in 1897, where he married a violinist whom he had met during his studies in Brussels. He taught music and drawing before taking over the direction of the fine arts department at Colorado College. Then, in 1903, the great break occurred, concerning the cause(s) of which various theories circulate: he left family, career, and wealth behind and returned to Switzerland, where his relentless decline began. While initially still playing first violin in the Geneva Symphony Orchestra, he eventually made a living as a street musician and laborer.

Deeply in debt and, for his family's taste, too isolated, Soutter is committed in 1923 to the old age home in Ballaigues in the canton of Vaud. Here, despite his reclusiveness, a handful of acquaintances support his creative work, including the Vallotton brothers, who exhibit his works in their gallery in Lausanne, as well as Le Corbusier, who makes him known outside of Switzerland, for example, through an article in 1936 in the Parisian surrealist magazine «Minotaure.» Cut off from the world and his relatives by the war, Soutter dies in 1942 in a hospice.

Meanwhile, his greatest works, such as the one used on the poster (approx. 51×68 cm – he did not create larger ones), regularly achieve prices between CHF 200,000 and 400,000 at auctions. Furthermore, Soutter's work contributed significantly to the French artist Jean Dubuffet coining the term Art Brut in 1945.

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