Fondation Wilhelm Gimmi

 

The Fondation Wilhelm Gimmi was created in 1969 by Suzanne Gimmi after the death of her husband. Its mission is to promote the work of the painter of Zurich origin who settled in Chexbres in 1940. It preserves the artist’s studio collection, which was deposited with the Musée Jenisch Vevey in 1991: some 70 oil paintings, a hundred lithographs and more than 1000 drawings. Trained in Zurich, Wilhelm Gimmi (1886-1965) moved to Paris in 1908 where he attended the Académie Julian. Co-founder of the Moderne Bund in 1911 with Klee, Arp, Helbig, Lüthy and Huber, he participated in one of the first associations of Swiss modern artists and contributed to the promotion of the avant-garde in Switzerland. From 1919, when he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne alongside Bonnard, Matisse and Marquet, he achieved his first successes in Paris, the first steps towards an international career. The artist’s favourite subjects, nudes and genre scenes, evolved from the time he moved to Chexbres to include vineyard scenes and landscapes of Lake Geneva.

 

President: Richard Aeschlimann