Marie-Thérèse Vacossin

Marie-Thérèse Vacossin

Born in Paris 1929, she lives and works in Switzerland

Represented by the Galerie La Ligne since 2007

Works by Marie-Thérèse Vacossin

Her artistic journey is rich and diverse, spanning various styles and influences.

Marie-Thérèse Vacossin attended the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris from 1947 to 1949. She continued her studies at the École du Louvre from 1948 to 1950. In 1955 and 1956, she pursued professorial drawing studies in the City of Paris. In 1956, she relocated to Basel, Switzerland.

From 1951 to 1955, she studied under Robert Lapoujade, who encouraged her to abandon representational ideas and perceive beauty in the world around her.

In the 1950s, she explored lyrical abstraction, influenced by artists like Vieira da Silva, Nicolas de Staël, and Antoni Tàpies. The 1960s saw a return to figuration, reflecting the changing consumer society.

In 1973, influenced by Jean Gorin and inspired by Ad Reinhardt, Vacossin found her artistic path. She transitioned to geometric abstraction, focusing on color perception

Her works may surprise and captivate visitors with their unique perspectives and artistic expressions, she is a master of color combinations-, and perception.

Marie-Thérèse Vacossin, born in Paris, has acquired a particularly long experience in helping colour to achieve strong luminosity and vibration - beyond monochrome.

The fruit is an extraordinarily intense engagement with colour to enhance its effect. Her works are therefore no longer to be evaluated simply as objects from this or that geometric justification, but they are to be evaluated by what they achieve. And her art as a whole is a mediation of sensual experience. Nevertheless, one asks how this mediation takes place, whereby the large monochrome colour surface - an all over - was out of the question for Marie-Thérèse Vacossin.

She sought and found more sensitive methods to make the colour vibrate. Other authors rightly point out, however, that she would never have joined a particular art movement despite being "deeply rooted in the French painting tradition, including the Impressionists". When it comes to the intensification of the colour blue, for example, one gets into linguistic trouble with works by Marie-Thérèse Vacossin, as new word combinations with "blue" have to be sought and found in addition to the already imaginative names from "sky blue" to "orient blue".

Moreover, synaesthetic formulations of pitches and timbres, with which vibration is generally associated, suggest themselves. However, an attempt at description can also be made with the help of the proportionality of the creative means. Thus it is noticeable that vibration or oscillation in her works is strongest in the immediate vicinity of the blue lines, with their frequency and thus also with their width. Every nuance results in a change of the "timbre".

It also happens that the effect does not come from the lines, but from the translucent blue ground, i.e. that the lines become a latticework. These are phenomena that form the basis of Gestalt psychology.

Excerpt from Objective Methods Make Colours Vibrate by Eugen Gommringer

Public collections (Selection)

Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich, Basel, CH

Musée des Ursulines, Mâcon, F

Allianz, Berlin, D

Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, D

Alcatel, Cortaillod, CH

Donation Dr. Francis Jeunet, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Neuchâtel, CH

Donation André le Bozec, Musée de Cambrai, F

E.on, München, D

Europäisches Patentamt, München, D

Banque Bonhôte & Cie SA, Neuchâtel, CH

Donation Eva-Maria Fruhtrunk, Musée Cambrai, F

Donation Frau Gutmann, Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich, CH

FRAC Bretagne

Satoru Sato Art Museum, Miyagi, JP

Hexal AG, Holzkirchen, D

Musée du Touquet, Donation André le Bozec, F