Alice Bailly

(b Geneva, 25 Feb 1872; d Lausanne, 1 Jan 1938). Swiss painter and multimedia artist. From 1890/91 she studied under Hugues Bovy (1841-1903) and Denise Sarkissof at the Ecole d'Art in Geneva. A travel scholarship enabled her to study in Munich for a year. From 1904 until the outbreak of World War I Bailly lived in Paris, where she associated with Cubist artists, including Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand L?ger, Marie Laurencin and Sonia Lewitska (1882-1914). From 1905 to 1926 she exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne. From 1906 to 1910 her work was influenced by Fauvism, and from 1910 she became interested in Cubism and Futurism: Equestrian Fantasy with Pink Lady (1913; Zurich, Gal. Strunskaja) is reminiscent of the work of Gino Severini or Franz Marc in its rhythmic movement and planar fragmentation of horses and riders into coloured patterns. Other paintings of this period that are also indebted to these movements include Mme Hodler at the Perle du Lac (1919; Geneva, Mus. A. & Hist.; see SWITZERLAND, fig. 9). From 1913 or 1916 she executed over 50 tableaux-laine, in which she used coloured strands of wool as a painter would apply brushstrokes, for example the Man with the Golden Heart (Portrait of Werner Reinhart) (1920; Winterthur Collegium). She also produced mixed-media works, combining oil paint with coloured papers, bronze foil, glass beads, felt and appliqu?, as in the portrait of Raymonde Naville (1916; Lausanne, Fond. Alice Bailly). In 1918 she became involved with the Dada circle in Zurich. She settled in Lausanne in 1923. Her last major project was the mural (1936-7; in situ) across three walls for the foyer of the Th??tre Municipal, Lausanne. One wall is devoted to the Life of a Ballet Dancer and a second, facing wall to an Equestrian Fantasy; Bailly linked the two with a four-section frieze depicting a Harlequinade painted on one of the adjoining walls at a later stage.

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