Offered by Galerie Latham
REQUEST INFORMATION
Copper, brass and silver "dinanderie" vase, usual hallmark of the artist.
Jean-Albert Duvoisin (1904-1991) was born in Geneva and it was in this city that he developed his talent as a "chiseler-goldsmith," as he called himself. A former student of the Geneva School of Industrial Arts, the artist was particularly attached to the "real craft," which he practiced with respect for tradition and using tools he made himself. He is a key figure in Geneva's jewelry and goldsmithing of the 20th century. He first opened a boutique on Rue de la Cité, among the antique dealers. He would soon open, around 1941, his store, well known to the Genevans, on Passage Terraillet. At the same time, he participated in several events, including the 2nd National Exhibition of Fine and Applied Arts, which was held in Plainpalais in 1931, in the now-destroyed Palais des Expositions. He mastered the traditional forms of silver jewelry (a field in which he excelled) and copperware. But his creativity transfigured classical forms (tea and coffee sets, pitchers, boxes and vases) by bringing together pewter, copper, brass, silver and gold. His goldsmithing works are true works of art. While this outstanding goldsmith and chaser worked mainly with silver, he also worked with copper and gold, in the spirit of the Lyon goldsmith and medalist Claudius Linossier (1893-1953), whom he never met. His sculptures and shaped pieces in copperware, mainly made in the 1930s, are quite rare on the art market (the Geneva Museum of Art and History has a very stylized portrait of a woman from this period, in the spirit of Matisse's cutouts, made in repoussé tin).
