Charles Rollier – Mother And Little Girl - Ink Wash - Signed

Work created by Charles Rollier, a Swiss painter, before he left Italy to join Geneva. Works from this period are extremely rare.

Scene depicting a woman leaning over a little girl, in a window frame. The woman has an enveloping and protective attitude, she leans over the child, we see her in profile. The little girl is seen from the front. Mother and child hold hands. The two faces are highlighted in white, which clearly sets them apart from the other elements done with brush and pen, in black. A great peaceful tenderness emanates from this small drawing.

The work is signed and dated lower right. Very small in format, this work is placed on a white background and presented on a cream background, itself placed under a white mat highlighted with gold and dark blue lines. The whole is placed under glass, in an elegant stuccoed and gilded wooden frame, with an old patina. The paper of the work is yellowed but the whole appears in very good condition.

The artist
Charles Rollier is one of the most famous painters of the Swiss school. Known for his works mainly falling under lyrical abstraction, he nevertheless explored figuration, especially at the beginning of his activity.

Rollier was born in Milan in 1912, where he trained as a painter. He began to paint and draw around 1930. Very few works from this period have survived. Fleeing fascist Italy, he settled in Basel, Switzerland. He lived in Paris between 1938 and 1940 and became friends with the painter Gustav Bolin, whom he joined in 1940 in Mirmande in the Drôme (France) fleeing the German occupation. In 1941, urged by his father, who feared the hostilities of war, he returned to Switzerland and settled in Geneva. In the cafés of the Old Town, frequented by artists and intellectuals living in Geneva, he became friends with Alberto Giacometti and Roger Montandon.

Rollier began to achieve success in the immediate post-war period, where he lived between Geneva and Paris. There, he met Nicolas de Staël, among others. In 1952, he settled permanently in Geneva with his wife and two children. Years followed, devoted to philosophical reading and a profound spiritual quest. He died of a heart attack in 1968.

While he maintained a separate, unclassifiable and sometimes unknown identity, Rollier regularly exhibited in Switzerland and abroad from 1953 onwards. He was one of the Swiss representatives at the 1958 Venice Biennale. A major retrospective was dedicated to him in 1969 at the Musée Rath (Geneva).
Charles Rollier's works are regularly the subject of private exhibitions and public sales.

Work visible at the gallery (07240).
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