Lucien Schwob

He was born October 7, 1895 in La Chaux-de-Fonds and died June 6, 1985 in the same city, is a Swiss painter, draftsman, lithographer and essayist.

Coming from a Jewish family of industrial watchmakers, he studied at the gymnasium of his hometown where he notably met Berthe Eimann. He abandoned scientific studies in 1912 to focus on painting. In 1919, he founded the review Les Voix with Jean-Paul Zimmermann, Charles Humbert and Madeleine Woog. Self-taught, except for a stint at the School of Fine Arts in Paris and a few evening classes at the School of Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds, he undertook several trips. In Spain, Italy, Belgium and the south of France to train his gaze. Tempted by a cubist approach in the years 1924, he quickly returned to a painting close to the influence of Cézanne.

In 1933, the artist married Camille Schwob-Levaillant, his aunt by marriage. In 1934, he discovered Ostend, which he frequented regularly until the end of his life, and became friends with James Ensor. His painting then moved towards a very colorful expressionism.

In 1941, following the death of his wife after a long agony, Lucien Schwob converted to Catholicism. In 1947, he remarried Odette Hug. The encounters with Jacques Villon and then Albert Gleizes at the end of the 1940s brought him back to Cubism. From 1938 to 1945, he was a member of the Committee of the Society of Friends of the Arts of La Chaux-de-Fonds. From 1951, he gave painting lessons at the School of Art for about fifteen years.

He published his first essay, Réalité de l'art, in 1955. Shortly after, his art shifted into abstraction, first geometric with the Bordighera series, then essentially lyrical, from 1959, with the Sodium et Néon series. . Following a depression, Schwob ceased all plastic production in 1965 and devoted himself to writing works on painting, in particular a study on Le Gréco and Velasquez entitled Fulgurance and pictorial magic (1984) and Léopold Robert (1986) , published a year after his death. He also gave several conferences at Club 44, in 1979 on Monique Saint-Hélier, in 1983 on his work as a painter and writer and in 1985 on Léopold Robert. In 1988-1989, the Museum of Fine Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds offered a retrospective exhibition of the painter's work.