After having studied drawing in Basle, then architecture in the Polytechnic University in Zurich, Pefer Pfosi is settling in Geneva where he is teaching at the Fine Art School (1966-1980). He develops namely an unpublished theory about colour.
The years of education of this astonishing artist are narrowly bounded to his professional steps. Painter, worker in mosaic, watercolour, lino-engraver, user of collages, he is a passionate researcher and master in all these disciplines. The essential leading thread to these various expressions is colour, but not just colour : “it is the effect of the colours which is decisive, and not the reality of colours the way they are studied by the physicists and the chemists”, he says namely.
The collages, first selection among some exhibitions the gallery will dedicate to Peter Pfosi, sparkle with colour fields. The organisation of the painted surface, so much in the geometry of assembled forms, - that sometimes slight overlap each other -, than in the juxtaposition of pure colours, playing light and dark, coldness and warmth, rare curves and straight lines, crossing now and then the coloured field, the whole is perfectly orchestrated, in a frankness and purity only permitted thanks to a wide knowledge and experience.
In the more tonic registers, the colours sing, the pinks are sharp, the yellows are golden, amber or get acidified; the reds are bright, roses become sometimes poetic. Simultaneously, in the more secret registers, the browns, beiges, blacks, here and there massive, are asserted with authority. The imaginary can travel across these infinite fields and perceive a black “sky” revealed by a pink field, or a black field transmuting a yellow sky.
In total freedom, the artist allows himself all the rights, with legitimacy and happiness.
In the works on canvas, the fields overflow with material. The artist invests all his energy and tireless researches, being on the watch of every instant he encloses in a brush stroke; and this brush stroke, heavy with paint, more and more over the years, is maturating the work, which evolves in parallel to the artist. It gains in density and purity with time, in a way that only the essential remains. Was he not saying : “I want to express the maximum with the minimum of means ?” The demonstration of this credo is astonishing.
Peter Pfosi (Basle 1913 – Geneva 2004), lives between Zuoz, Geneva (where he settles in 1945) and Paris where he is regularly visiting Alberto Giacometti’s studio. The sculptor from Stampa, on his turn, when going back to Grisons, doesn’t fail to stop at Pfosi’s studio in Zuoz. Main exhibitions in Switzerland, namely in Zurich, Chur, Geneva (Museum of Athénée, Halles de l’Ile). Retrospective exhibition in Zuoz in 1993 (transmission on TSR, DRS, TSI). Numerous works in public and private Swiss collections.
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