Charles L'Eplattenier

Charles L'Eplattenier, born October 9, 1874 in Neuchâtel and died June 7, 1946 in Les Brenets, is a Swiss painter, architect, sculptor and decorator, promoter of Art Nouveau in the Neuchâtel region.

Son of a peasant family, Charles L'Eplattenier began apprenticeship with a house painter in Peseux in 1887. During his apprenticeship, he also took drawing lessons with the watercolorist Paul Bouvier, based in Neuchâtel. Competent and passionate, he was sent to Budapest where he attended the decorative art school from 1890 to 1893. Holder of a scholarship from the canton of Neuchâtel, he then went to Paris where he attended the national school. Superior of Fine Arts in Luc-Olivier Merson's studio for three years.

On his return, he was called to teach drawing and decorative composition at the school of fine arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he took charge between 1903 and 1914. In 1905 he created a "higher course there. ", a program by which he imports the theoretical foundations of international Art Nouveau and adapts them to the local climate to create the Fir Style. His teachings were followed by artists such as André Evard, Charles Humbert, the poster artist Jules Courvoisier, Jeanne Perrochet, Marie-Louise Goering and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, the future Le Corbusier.

With certain students of this higher course, gathered under the name of the Reunited Art Workshops, between 1909 and 1912 he decorated the crematorium of La Chaux-de-Fonds. During this period, he pursued a double career as an artist and a teacher. He resigned from the art school in 1914 in order to devote himself completely to his artistic work, carrying out numerous commissions.

He died in 1946 following a fatal fall in the rocks of the Doubs.