Albert Chavaz

Valaisan with a glass of wine

Albert Chavaz, born December 6, 1907 in Geneva, died January 17, 1990 in Sion, is a Swiss painter. Albert Chavaz, son of Alphonse, a baker, and Joséphine, née Perréard (a Frenchwoman from La Balme-de-Sillingy) is the eldest of a family of nine children. He studied at Saint Joseph College in Thonon where, under the impulse of a professor, he began to take an interest in pictorial art. He then began an apprenticeship as a baker which he never completed. Thanks to his mother, he was admitted in 1927 to the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, where he studied under Fernand Bovy and Philippe Hainard, among others. From the beginning of his artistic career, he was part of the École des Pâquis, then led by Alexandre Cingria and Jean-Louis Gampert. There he met the Genevan painter Émile Chambon, with whom he remained close throughout his life and with whom he exchanged a very important correspondence. In 1931, he received the Harvey Prize for a portrait of Jeanne Delabays which was exhibited at the Swiss National Salon of Fine Arts at the Palais des Expositions in Geneva. Thanks to a scholarship, from 1933, he studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He then worked in Valais on the decoration of the church of Fully. This canton therefore became the central point of his artistic career. In 1940, in Savièse, he met Julie Luyet, married her and settled in the town. They will have 6 children. Throughout Switzerland, he produced numerous murals in churches, public and private institutions, as well as in private homes, and also illustrated books. In 1944, he received a prize from the Committee of the Gaspard Vallette Foundation in Geneva, for all of his work. In 1957, a major retrospective of his work was organized at the Majorie Museum in Sion. Then, 10 years later, the Museum of Art and History of Friborg organized an exhibition on the occasion of its 60th anniversary. He lost his wife in 1977. A major retrospective of his work was organized at the Gianadda Foundation in Martigny and at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Sion, in 1983. For his 80th birthday, he was made honorary bourgeois of the town of Saviese. On January 17, 1990, Chavaz died in Sion hospital, he rests with his wife in Savièse. Albert Chavaz belongs, with Raphaël Ritz, Édouard Vallet, Ernest Biéler and others, to what is called the School of Savièse.