Painter of the Valais · École de Savièse
Raphy
Dallèves
Sion, 1878–1940
A modern primitive: the contemporary of cubism who chose the Quattrocento to paint the peasant world of the Val d'Hérens.
Painter of the Valais · École de Savièse
Sion, 1878–1940
A modern primitive: the contemporary of cubism who chose the Quattrocento to paint the peasant world of the Val d'Hérens.
The thesis
Raphy Dallèves (1878-1940) is the most singular of the Valais painters of the École de Savièse. Trained in Paris (Académie Julian, then the École des Beaux-Arts, 1899-1905) and steeped in the Italian rooms of the Louvre, he built between 1901 and 1905 a "primitivist language" fusing the linear elegance of Art Nouveau with the tempera of the Quattrocento primitives. His old spinners, his costumed women of Évolène, his goats at dusk are not folklore: they are, in Buzzini's phrase, "the memorial and the armorial of a race."
"A modern primitive." Frédéric Elsig, 1999
A first clear, transparent manner drawn from watercolour.
A harder line, gold, echoes of the primitives: Botticelli, Fra Angelico.
Volumetric simplification, breadth, the calm of large compositions.
A stiffer, more Helvetic manner: Holbein replaces Italy.
Gallery
Reproductions after Frédéric Elsig's catalogue (1999). Works in the public domain (the artist died in 1940). High-resolution photographs of the originals will enrich this gallery. See the full catalogue raisonné (61 works) →
The European context
The deliberate return to the "primitives" runs across turn-of-the-century Europe. Dallèves belongs to it fully.
Life
The legacy
On his death in 1940, Dallèves left the bulk of his work (some two hundred pieces) to Sion and the Valais. That gift became the founding core of the Musée des beaux-arts de Sion, opened in 1947. Then the painter slipped, in Elsig's words, into "relative oblivion." 2028 marks 150 years since his birth. The moment to finish what was begun.
To give a modern primitive back the light he gave the Valais.
Stay informed
2028 marks 150 years since Raphy Dallèves was born. Leave your address to hear about exhibitions, publications and news around his work.
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Press & resources
A press kit, fact sheet, high-resolution images and the standard monograph are available.
The reference
The standard work remains the monograph by Frédéric Elsig, Raphy Dallèves. Un primitif moderne (Éditions du Verseau, Denges, 1999), which establishes the catalogue and the four-phase reading used here. It builds on the first monograph by Louis Buzzini (1941).