What’s behind the picture?

The Manuscript Department’s recent acquisition of the archives of painter Jean-Claude Hesselbarth gives us access to the Lausanne artist’s backroom. The documents we have preserved enable us to understand how an artist can make a living from his art, and what socio-cultural networks are formed around his activity, or influence it.

Jean-Claude Hesselbarth (1925-2015), nephew of sculptor Jean Clerc, enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (1947 to 1952), where he studied with Casimir Reymond and Marcel Poncet. By 1954, he was recognized as one of Switzerland’s leading tachist painters.

In 1955, together with André Gigon, Charles-Oscar Chollet, Denise Voïta, Arthur Jobin and Antoine Poncet, he founded the Collège Vaudois des Artistes concrets, a group campaigning for the integration of artworks in the city and for artists’ participation in building construction and restoration projects. Since 1957, he has been an active member of the Vaud section of the Society of Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects (SPSAS). A friend of poet Philippe Jaccottet, writer Gaston Cherpillod, theatre-maker Marcel Imhof and many others, he is at the heart of Lausanne’s cultural network.

From 1956 to 2010, Jean-Claude Hesselbarth lived on rue de Bourg in Lausanne, the street where he was born, and occupied various studios, including the one at Rôtillon, demolished in 2004. In 2010, he moved permanently to Grignan.

The archives, which mainly concern the artist’s professional activity, were assembled thanks to the foresight and tenacity of Madame Monique Roulier, a friend of the Hesselbarth family. Madame Liliane Annen-Hesselbarth, the artist’s widow, donated them to the BCUL in 2016. The archives can be consulted at the Unithèque.

The BCUL is organizing an exhibition devoted to the Lausanne artist’s evolution within the artistic and commercial network of French-speaking Switzerland between 1950 and 2015 in the Riponne space. Already accessible now, it will be open until April 25, 2021.