Lucienne Peiry, born in Lausanne on 4 September 1961, holds a doctorate (PhD) in the history of art; she is a specialist in Outsider Art ("Art Brut"), an exhibition curator, a lecturer and the author of several publications. She gives lectures in both Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, and has been teaching Outsider Art at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL, College of Humanities) [1] in Lausanne since 2010. Since 2016, she has also been teaching at the University of Lausanne (Department of Social and Political Sciences) [2] [3]
Brought up in the canton of Fribourg, in 1996 Lucienne Peiry was the first woman to obtain a Phd in the History of Art in Lausanne (capital of Switzerland's canton of Vaud). Her thesis was the first to be devoted to "Art Brut" and to the history of the collection that Jean Dubuffet instigated. [4] It was initially published by Flammarion (Paris) as "L'Art Brut," (1997, new editions 1999, 2001, [5] 2006, [6] 2010; [7] English translation 2001, [8] new edition 2006; [9] German translation 2005; [10] Chinese translation 2015 [11] ); an enlarged and updated version by Flammarion appeared in 2016 [12] (400 pp, 500 illus.).
Formerly, Lucienne Peiry was a journalist with Radio suisse romande (French language radio broadcasts) and, at the same time, a freelance exhibition curator (1987–2001). In 2001, she took over the direction of Lausanne's Collection de l'art brut from Michel Thévoz . [13] In that position, she set up a number of temporary exhibitions and added to the museum's holdings by discovering Outsider Art creators in Switzerland and in various other countries of Europe, as well as in notably India, Japan, China, Benin and Bali.
The author of several works and articles on Outsider Art, Lucienne Peiry has also directed numerous publications and exhibition catalogues for the museum, including the cult book "Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne," published by Flammarion-Skira of Paris in 2012 (French, English, German). [14]
Lucienne Peiry has encouraged the museum to produce or coproduce (with the filmmakers Philippe Lespinasse and Erika Manoni) several documentaries on Outsider Art creators. [4] In 2001 she launched a teaching program for the Collection de l'Art Brut (young persons guided tours, activities books, workshops, publications), which she continued to develop. [15]
In 2003, she organized an exhibition on Louis Soutter (title: "Louis Soutter et la musique"), jointly with the Basel Museum of Art and the Cantonal Museum of Fine Art Lausanne. [16] Christian Zacharias, director of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (OCL) participated in the project. She set up various partnerships with other Swiss cultural institutions, including the Théâtre de Vidy in Lausanne, the Museum of Art and History in Fribourg, and Lausanne's Petit Théâtre.
Appointed Director of Research and International Relations for the Collection de l'Art Brut in 2012, Lucienne Peiry gave up her position as museum director. She is now in charge of promoting the Lausanne museum abroad (exhibitions, lectures) and of seeking out new Outsider Art creators throughout the world (Europe, Asia, Africa, and more). She encourages studies on the creators she discovers, and on behalf of new publications and documentary films. She also lends advice to students and researchers, being called upon as an expert for works on Outsider Art at various universities (including the "hautes écoles") in Switzerland and abroad. [15]
Since 2012, she has also kept up a monthly artistic contribution for the RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) broadcasting company, on behalf of their "A vous de jouer" (your turn to play) program on Espace 2. [4]
Lucienne Peiry curated an exhibition on the encyclopedic art work of Armand Schulthess ("The Poetic Labyrinth of Armand Schulthess") at Neuchâtel's Centre Dürrenmatt in 2014, [17] and again at Lugano's Museo cantonale d'Arte in 2016. [18] Two trilingual exhibition catalogues were published for the two events. [19] [20]
In 2017 she curated the show "Inextricabilia, Enchevêtrements magiques" (Inextricabilia – Magical Mesh) [21] at the maison rouge in Paris: in addition to the show's catalogue, [22] many articles and newspaper accounts appeared, [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] together with a major analysis by the art historian Valérie Arconati in the French daily newspaper Libération . [28] [29] Later she curates an exhibition about Curzio Di Giovanni (HEP, Lausanne, 2018) which gathers around 80 drawings shown for the first time to the public, and also the exhibition "Rhinocéros, féroce?", [30] [31] [32] [33] where she creates a dialogue between art and science with rhinoceroses painted and drawn by Gaston Dufour and real stuffed rhinoceroses (Musée cantonal de zoologie, Lausanne, 2019-2020). [34] [35]
She publishes the book "Écrits d'Art Brut. Graphomanes extravagants" (Seuil edition, 2020), which is the catalogue of the exhibition that took place at the Tinguely Museum in Basel in 2021-2022. [36]
Lucienne Peiry curated the exhibition "Écrits d’Art Brut – Wild Expression & Thought" [37] [38] which was presented from October 2021 to January 2022 at the Tinguely Museum in Basel.
From May to September 2022, her exhibition "Parures d'Art Brut" [39] is on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Locle, in Switzerland.
Since 2021 is she part of the research committee for Art Brut at the Centre Pompidou, which has been founded after the donation of the Bruno Decharme collection. [40]
Lucienne Peiry holds a website called Notes d'Art Brut.
This is a non exhaustive list of Lucienne Peiry's publications. The whole list is available on www.notesartbrut.ch
Outsider art is an umbrella term for any art made by self-taught individuals who are untrained and untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. Most are poor.
Nek Chand Saini was a self-taught Indian artist, known for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, an eighteen-acre sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh.
Aloïse Blanche Corbaz was a Swiss outsider artist included in Jean Dubuffet's initial collection of psychiatric art. She is one of very few acclaimed female outsider artists.
Judith Scott was an American fiber sculptor. She was deaf and had Down Syndrome. She was internationally renowned for her art. In 1987, Judith was enrolled at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, which supports people with developmental disabilities. There, Judith discovered her passion and talent for abstract fiber art, and she was able to communicate in a new form. An account of Scott's life, Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott, was written by her twin sister, Joyce Wallace Scott, and was published in 2016.
Johann Knüpfer (1866–1910) was a schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill.
Heinrich Anton Müller was a Swiss outsider artist and painter.
Louis Adolphe Soutter was a Swiss painter and graphic artist in the Art Brut style, who produced most of his work while under care in a hospice. He also worked as a musician, playing the violin.
Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve was a French artist and mosaicist whose work is considered to be outsider art.
Eijiro Miyama is a Japanese outsider artist who lives in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. He is often referred to as Bōshi Ojisan due to his habit of riding his bicycle around the streets of Yokohama wearing eccentric clothing and large, elaborate hats or headgear adorned with dolls and other recycled objects.
Regula Tschumi is a Swiss social anthropologist and art historian.
Ataa Oko Addo was a Ghanaian builder of figurative palanquins and figurative coffins, and at over 80 years of age he became a painter of Art Brut.
Charles Steffen (1927–1995) was an American self-taught artist from Chicago, Illinois. He belongs to the outsider art movement and is known for his drawings of an imaginary world "peopled by creatures resembling aliens."
Eugenio Santoro, was an Italian-born Swiss outsider artist.
Augustin Lesage was a French coal miner who became a painter and artist through the help of what he considered to be spirit voices. His style utilizes patterns and symmetry on a large scale, often accompanied by bright, vibrant colors. He was untrained and is considered an outsider artist, part of Art Brut.
Vojislav Jakić was a Serbian painter, renowned as an outsider artist. His paintings and drawings display phantasmagoric visions of death, insects and human insides. His most significant works are exhibited in the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne and Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Jagodina.
Laure Pigeon (1882–1965) was a French medium who produced an oeuvre of 500 drawings related to her Spiritualist practice. She is considered one of the foremost Art Brut creators.
Jeanne Tripier (1869–1944) was a French medium who produced works of text, drawing and embroidery under Spiritualist influence. She is considered part of the Art Brut canon.
Magali Herrera (1914–1992) was a Uruguayan self taught artist who wrote, danced, acted and made films in addition to producing the oeuvre of paintings of Utopias, for which she is known.
Emma Hauck was a German outsider artist known for her artistic, handwritten letters to her husband while she was institutionalized in a mental hospital. Though these letters were never delivered, they have since come to be regarded as works of art due to their abstraction and repetitive content. In many cases the letters consist of only the words "Come sweetheart" or "Come" written over and over in flowing script.
Martine Aballéa is a French-American artist born in 1950.
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