Aloïse (Aloïse Corbaz dite)

*1886 ✝1964 | Schweiz

Now considered one of the major figures of art brut, Aloïse is well known to a wider audience today thanks to the eponymous 1975 film by Liliane de Kermadec (born 1928), starring Delphine Seyrig. Aloïse’s artistic practice is inseparably linked to her disease – schizophrenia – and to her internment in a psychiatric ward for 46 years. Born into a family of modest means, she was only eleven when she lost her mother, who had been exhausted by multiple pregnancies; her older sister, Marguerite, thus took over the running of the household with an iron fist. While day-to-day life was difficult, in her works the artist nevertheless occasionally evokes the colours of the Easter eggs, and Christmas baubles and gifts of her childhood. All of the members of her family sang or played music. The young Aloïse, gifted with a lovely voice, was passionate about singing and was very well versed in the operatic repertoire; she took music lessons with the organist of Lausanne Cathedral and was a member of the choir. She dreamed briefly of becoming an opera singer, but was unable to fulfil this ambition. After her certificate of studies, obtained in 1904, she attended the professional dressmaking school in Lausanne. In 1911, it would appear that she had a romantic relationship with a theology student, which Marguerite sternly forced her to break off.