Albert Trachsel (1863-1929) - The Lake Lovers

Albert Trachsel (1863-1929)
Lake lovers
Pastel
36 x 45 cm on view
(57 x 67 cm with frame)
Signed lower right

After studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Zurich, he entered the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he stayed in the 1880s, making friends with his compatriots, including Maurice Baud, and traveling around Europe before meeting and befriending Ferdinand Hodler and the sculptor Auguste de Niederhausern.
From 1889, he frequented the Symbolist milieu in Paris. In 1890, he took part in the competition for the future Palais de Rumine. In the same year, Trachsel publishedQuelques mots sur l'art suisse. In 1891 and 1892, he presented his drawings of utopian architecture at the Exposition des Artistes Indépendants and took part in the Salon de la Rose-Croix in Paris. Back in Geneva (1893), he worked on the drawings for the album of utopian architectures, Les fêtes réelles. This album represents the first volume of an unfinished three-part cycle,Le poème, in which he visualizes ideas close to those of the Symbolists. This trilogy and its literary counterpart,Le cycle(1893), were to form a total work of art calledL'harmonie. In 1896, he designed the decoration for the shadow play Le Sapajou, presented at the Swiss National Exhibition. After settling in Geneva in 1901, Trachsel. definitively abandoned architecture to devote himself to writing and painting. Between 1905 and 1914, he produced the Dream Landscapes, his main work, imaginary visualizations of landscapes of the soul, to be compared with the fantastic tales he published at the same time. After 1914, he painted only Geneva landscapes, with no further reference to his imaginary worlds.

Ref: S60F1V1HFI