Germaine Boy

Germaine Boy (1884-1971) was a French artist who worked in the Valais between around 1910 and 1950. She made annual summer visits to Savièse and the Val d'Hérens, notably in the company of the artist and writer Isabelle Maude Onslow (1894-?). The works Boy produced in Valais were sent to Parisian salons, exhibited and sold during his lifetime. Towards the end of the 1960s, some forty of these paintings returned to Switzerland and were acquired by the Musée d'art du Valais. Forgotten when the history of the singular cultural phenomenon of the Savièse School was being written, Germaine Boy was an artist who, like some of her contemporaries, contributed to the development of a regional iconography and to the dissemination of the rural image of the Valais outside the canton.

Germaine Boy. Entre Paris et le Valais is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to this French artist in Switzerland. In keeping with the works known to her to date, the exhibition focuses on compositions executed in Savièse. Early works based on the ornamental practices of Art Nouveau establish the artist's roots in Paris, her place of origin and professional recognition, and begin her journey to the Valais, a land of welcome, work and artistic inspiration from the 1910s onwards. This dialogue between France and Switzerland continues in the catalog accompanying the exhibition. Comprising reproductions of works and previously unpublished archival documents, it is the first scientific publication dedicated to Germaine Boy.

Based on current research, this temporary exhibition chronologically retraces the artist's private and professional life, and highlights some of the friendships that influenced her career. Through the cross-presentation of a selection of sometimes little-known works from Swiss, French and English collections, as well as various historical documents, it revalues part of Germaine Boy's career, which was divided between Paris and the Valais.

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