Albert Locca

Painter, born in 1895 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, died in 1966 in Neuchâtel. The third of a family of nine children, of Piedmontese origin, he took classes at the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds and, in contact with the Barraud brothers, devoted himself entirely to painting from 1930. II wife in first marriage Marguerite Pellet, painter, sister of Jeanne Pellet, known under the name of Janebé. Locca initially produced realistic works (nudes, female figures then still lifes and landscapes) which would make a good part of his notoriety.

Albert Locca, who had just died after four years of a painful illness, from which he took advantage of the slightest remissions to resume his brushes, was an extremely popular figure of an artist both in Neuchâtel and in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

He was born in the watchmaking metropolis in 1895, from a foreman mason father, whom he lost at the age of 14. The second born of a family of eight children, he had to help his family at a very young age. He became a house painter. But the taste for artistic painting was in him and he enrolled in evening classes at Charles L'Eplattenier's art school, where he had Léon Perrin and William Stauffer as teachers. and for illustrious fellow student Le Corbusier. There he studied drawing and painting. Besides, these evening classes were attended by a whole team of solid buddies who made common cause and. often common plate: Albert Locca and his brother Guido and the three Barraud brothers: Aimé, Aurèle and François.

In 1917, Albert Locca left for Geneva with François Barraud, to whom he was bound by a particularly solid friendship (François Barraud was to die at the age of thirty-five) and both worked in jewelery (pendants and bracelets). We will also find in the painting of Albert Lorca this taste for meticulousness.

Some ten years later. Albert Locca returns to La Chaux-de-Fonds, but the economic crisis which is felt acutely sees our artist unemployed. Locca then devotes himself - he has all his time by force of circumstance - totally to painting, from which he will now live exclusively.

In 1938, Albert Locca moved down to Neuchâtel, seduced by the landscapes of the shores of the lake.

It was only in 1950 that he discovered his country of origin during a stay in Venice. Yet Locca already knew the South and its light through several previous stays he made in the south of France.

We can say that Albert Locca exhibited in all the national PSAS events Before the war, he exhibited in Pontarlier then in Paris, in 1934, then at the Salon des artistes français, where his large portraits of women, his specialty at the time , were a great success.

For many years, he was keen to present his works at least once a year in Neuchâtel and La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Many Neuchâtel residents remember these outdoor exhibitions, in the courtyard of the town hall, where the two Locca brothers presented their works. Or even these artistic rooms of the Comptoir, which could not be imagined without many paintings signed Locca.

Admirer of the Italian painters of the Renaissance and of Hodler, Albert Locca was a painter with precise, rigorous drawing whose works honor many Neuchâtel salons.

Albert Locca leaves a 26-year-old son, Jimmy, also a painter but with a very different tendency from that of his father.

L. (article published in 1966)