Wood print/ Félix Vallotton

Félix Vallotton was a Swiss painter living in France and a member of the Nabi group. He also worked in hand printing and wood carving. He studied at the Cantonal College and studied painting for a while under "Samson Gugnard" who was a professor for advanced students. Finally, he moved to Paris to continue his studies.

Vallotton spent many hours in the Louvre museum and carefully studied the works of "Da Vinci", "Holbein", "Dürer" and modern painters such as "Goya" and "Manet" and especially "Ingres". His early paintings were influenced by "Holbein" and "Ingres".

He painted portraits, natural landscapes, human organs, nature and other subjects in a non-sentimental and realistic style.

Wood print/ Félix Vallotton

During his association with Nabi in the 1890s, Vallotton developed a simpler style and produced the carvings that earned him worldwide fame. He made his prints using the xylography (woodcut) method and was very skilled at it.

Vallotton was also active in the field of writing, and art reviews and the novel "The Life of a Murderer" have been published by him. He also worked as an art restorer for some time.

He participated in several international painting exhibitions in Paris and in one of these exhibitions he got to know the works of the Japanese artist "Hokusai" and was greatly influenced by him.

Vallotton became a member of "Les Nabis" group in 1892. The prophets were a group of post-impressionist artists who were active between 1881 and 1889. This group had a great impact on graphic art. They had a close relationship with Symbolist painters. In 1900, the group broke up.

Wood print/ Félix Vallotton

After 1901, he created a few prints and mostly painted. His later paintings mostly include portraits and human bodies and mentally painted landscapes. He had a purposeful notebook called "Reasons" notebook where he recorded the ideas of all his paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. When he died, 1,700 ideas were recorded in this book.

Vallotton's paintings were always admired for their quality and subject matter, but his woodblock prints were criticized for their dryness and lack of emotion. As an art critic wrote in one of the publications in 1910: Vallotton works like a policeman. Decisive and firm. An unbearable dryness arises from his works...