Alice Pauli. Gallerist, Collector, Art Patron
Paying homage to the gallerist and art patron Alice Pauli, this show hails the extraordinary career of a pioneer. Figures from the realm of international contemporary art, notable artists on the Swiss scene — the many names behind the features works are those that this exceptional woman had been eager to see brought together and showcased in a single venue.
Alice Pauli (Moutier, 1922-Lausanne, 2022) made the State of Vaud her sole beneficiary with the MCBA as her ultimate legatee. With the show Alice Pauli. Gallerist, Collector, Art Patron, the museum is keen to invite people of all ages and walks of life to discover this new chapter of our Canton’s cultural heritage whilst retracing the singular career of this well-known figure from Lausanne.
Through some ten sections, the show provides the contextual keys to the professional ans personal trajectory of a woman who was indeed ahead of her time. Alongside pieces that are now a part of the MCBA permanent collection, works on loan from museums, foundations, and privste collections bear witness to the commitment of this gallery owner and collector to the artists she has championed and often brought to the public’s attention. Large-format textiles by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jagoda Buić and Jean Lurçat pay tribute to Alice Pauli, who, along with her husband Pierre, helped launch the Biennale internationale de la tapisserie (International Tapestry Biennial of Lausanne). There are also works by key figures in international contemporary art, including Louise Nevelson, Giuseppe Penone, Pierre Soulages and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Alice Pauli’s many connections with the Swiss art scene are likewise illustrated thanks to the display of works by Louis Soutter, Jean Lecoultre, and Juan Martínez. And two galleries, one devoted to the Polish and Yugoslav art scenes in the 1960s and the other to the work of Alicia Penalba, underscore the talent of a true forerunner, a woman driven by the desire to share with people everywhere both her passion for art and the emotions it sparked within her.
Curator: Camille Lévêque-Claudet, curator of ancient and modern art, MCBA
Alice Pauli photographed in a sculptor's studio, circa, 1955. Detail. ©All rights reserved
Biography
ln the Late 1940s, Alice Pauli (Moutier, 1922-Lausanne, 2022) was active in the commercial world, taking care of sales for a watchmaking company, when she became interested in art and art exhibitions. She took her first steps in the art market in 1954 and began promoting the textile art of Jean Lurçat. With her husband Pierre Pauli, she then helped launch the Biennale internationale de la tapisserie, whose multiple iterations were held in the galleries of MCBA when the museum was located at its previous address in the Palais de Rumine.
ln 1961 Alice Pauli open a gallery in Lausanne on Avenue Rumine. From the outset she wanted to lend an international cachet to herventure and dedicated one of her first shows to the lithography of Sam Francis. Thanks in particulàr to the Salon international de galeries-pilotes held at MCBA, she was able to meet numerous foreign contemporary artists (including Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Mark Tobey and Alicia Penalba, to name just a few) and later present thejr work to the public in Lausanne, whilst also promoting Swiss artists like Jean Lecoultre, Catherine Bolle and Juan Martínez. The projects she undertook with them gave artistic life in French-speaking Switzerland an exhilarating boost and contributed to the renown of Galerie Alice Pauli. She was also taking part by this time in the major international art fairs, developing her activities and network. Joined by her son, Olivier, in 1989, Alice Pauli decided to move the gallery to the Flon neighbourhood of Lausanne, to a space that was better suited to showing large-format artworks.
Naturally Alice Pauli took care to set aside for her own collection works by the artists whose careers she passionately followed, at times developing friendships with them that lasted years. Their art, hanging on the walls of her home and installed in her garden, proved to be faithful friands as well, a daily presence that helped her to get over life’s painlful trials.
Alice Pauli and MCBA
In the 1990s, Alice Pauli figured amongst the very first and the most active supporters of a project to construct a new fine-arts museum in Lausanne. She continued that commitment by contributing to the funding for the new building, inagurated in 2019 on the site of Plateforme 10. And to grace the museum’s main hall, she donated a monumental sculpture by Giuseppe Penone. Alice Pauli went on to regularly enrich MCBA’s collection of international contemporary art with majorworks by a raster of renowned players on the art scene, including Pierre Soulages, Anselm Kiefer, Louise Nevelson, William Kentridge, Rebecca Horn, and Anish Kapoor.
