Louis Soutter. Supplement to the catalogue raisonné: Printed collection of essays and digital interface

Louis Soutter (Morges, 1871 – Baillaigues, 1942) still fascinates art lovers with his polymorphous output which defies the categories of modern art. Prematurely identified with Art Brut by Jean Dubuffet, Soutter has always been an enigma. His art, extraordinarily intimate and yet fiercely experimental, “sits well with the most avant-garde movements of the 20th century” (Thévoz, 2016). In the spirit of that enigma, one of the most fertile in the history of Western art, SIK-ISEA has embarked upon a venture to complete the artist’s catalogue raisonné. What can we still learn about the artist from these hitherto unknown drawings, roughly 200 in number?

Fifty years after SIK-ISEA published the catalogue raisonné of the work of Louis Soutter in two volumes with Éditions L’Âge d’Homme – Louis Soutter: Catalogue de l’œuvre (1974) and Louis Soutter ou l’écriture du désir (1976), volume 4 in the series “Catalogues raisonnés d’artistes suisses” – the Institute has once again joined forces with Michel Thévoz, the original author and world expert on Soutter, to tackle an unprecedented editorial project: an inventory of the works which have appeared in the art market over the last five decades. Destined for publication in both printed and digital form, this third volume of the Soutter corpus will be accompanied in its book version by a set of critical essays (French/English) while the digital version will be freely accessible as an online interface through the SIK-ISEA research portal. Alongside the project to compile a Supplement to the catalogue raisonné of Louis Soutter, volumes I and II, now out of print, will be digitised to permit screen-based reading and online commentary.