Maurice Rodieux (yverdon, Switzerland 1876 - Marrakech, Morocco 1927). “marrakech, La Koutoubia”.

Old frame, wood and stucco (usual wear). Frame dimensions: 87 x 72 cm. Dimensions of the pastel: 62 x 47 cm. Signed, located.
Maurice Rodieux (Yverdon, Switzerland 1876 - Marrakech, Morocco 1927)
Vaudois painter and architect born in Yverdon. His family moved to Lausanne in 1895 where he studied at the cantonal college, classical gymnast then at the Engineering School. From 1899 he studied architecture in Paris and attended the École des Beaux-Arts. Between his architectural work, he regularly went to Brittany where he painted with enthusiasm and then took part in several exhibitions in Lausanne, including that of December 1920 at the Hôtel de la Paix. During the 14-18 war he visited Greece of which he was a fervent admirer. He brought back numerous paintings of the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the Propylaea, made in the evening or at daybreak. These are quality documentary works where the painter is more interested in establishing the exact image of things than in rendering a personal vision. Maurice Rodieux participates in an archaeological mission in Egypt and Libya where he finds his best inspirations. He then went to Constantinople then to Tunisia and settled in Morocco where he died of typhus at the age of 51. “Courageous, intrepid, he lived there, renouncing the sweetness of civilization; a good rider, he set off on a donkey and all alone, went to paint according to his fancy and the effects of light; he had to adopt the technical necessities of local possibilities, renounce watercolor and oil painting to use pastel; this process was also wonderfully suited to giving a vision of distant, milky horizons, of the dusting of heat and sand. The Provence sites also retained it for a long time. Rarer are the paintings made in the country. However, he painted some landscapes in Saas-Fee, on the Orny glacier.