Walter Mafli

Market scene

1959

Painter and draftsman born in the canton of Saint-Gall to an unknown father and a deaf and mute mother, he spent his early childhood with his grandmother then was placed in an orphanage. He remained there until 1930. The following year, he began an apprenticeship as a stove-fire maker in Oberrieden in the canton of Zurich and completed his training to become a tiler. Fired from his job in 1934 following scarlet fever, he decided to leave German-speaking Switzerland by bike at the end of the year and spent a few days with an aunt near Bienne. Mafli then moved to Neuchâtel where he found a job as a tiler. When in 1935 the Swiss army summoned him to attend its recruit school, it was very natural that he found himself in a company of cyclists, since this was a sport he practiced diligently. Once his military service was over, he took drawing lessons with the Ticino painter Delfo Egidio Galli, a professor in Neuchâtel, who taught him academic techniques. There, he also met the four Barraud brothers, François Emile, Charles, Aimé and Aurèle. In Neuchâtel, Mafli also learned from Max Theynet whom he considered “his master”; it is he who instills in him the sense of painting and also teaches him the economy of color, reminding him that with eight of them, he can obtain all the others by mixing without having to buy them. He also meets Charles L'Eplattenier whose easel he will carry to paint on the banks of the Doubs. In 1939, he became a pupil of Casimir Reymond and Marcel Poncet at the Lausanne drawing school. Mafli also stays in Paris with his friend Jean-Pierre Doxat, whom he met at the painter Galli. There are several months left. In the early 1970s, cook Frédy Girardet offered Mafli a permanent fixture in his restaurant in Crissier. Will follow Roland Pierroz and Philippe Rochat. Anxious to support the projects of ambitious young people whose means are insufficient to carry them out, he created the “Les Enfants de Mafli” Foundation in 2001. In 2010, he was accused of tax evasion amounting to 4.4 million francs.