André Tommasini. A Life Spent Sculpting.

With the help of unpublished archives held by the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA), the exhibition spotlights the life and work of the Lausanne sculptor André Tommasini.

Son of a stonemason of Italian descent who lived and worked at the Montoie Cemetery, André Tommasini (1931-2011) studied stone carving before taking a degree in the early 1950s at the Lausanne School of Fine Arts in the studio of Casimir Reymond. Active mainly in what is called direct carving, a technique going back to classic statuary that allowed him to work closely with his chosen material, André Tommasini also produced numerous reliefs that are a part of their surrounding architecture as well as public artworks. He greatly admired Henry Moore’s sculpture as well, and his own work displays his examination of the tension between contradictory forms, organic and geometrical, full and empty, constricted and expansive.

The show also recreates the social and political dimension of André Tommasini’s art practice through the ties of friendship that connected him with other important actors on the Lausanne art scene in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Curator of the exhibition: Pierre-Henri Foulon, curator of contemporary art, MCBA