André Julien Prina
Born in 1886.
Died in 1941.
Lake Geneva, the city, landscapes and the human figure constitute the subjects that can be traced through the surviving documentation and known works. His career can thus be read through familiar places as much as through the pictorial debates of his time.
The «Rade de Genève», an oil on canvas dated 1912, constitutes a landmark in this history. Its title designates an emblematic motif of the city: the meeting of water and urban space. It invites us to consider the landscape of Lake Geneva as a subject of painting in its own right, capable of connecting the observation of a specific site with a search for composition.
In 2018–2019, the Maison Tavel, affiliated with the Musées d’art et d’histoire de Genève, included Prina in «L’Esprit de Hodler dans la peinture genevoise». The exhibition brought together artists who addressed lakes, mountains, trees or the portrait in a context marked by the presence of Ferdinand Hodler. This inclusion situates Prina within a generation working after Hodler’s affirmation, without reducing his paintings to a single line of artistic descent: the relationships between these painters may lie in subject matter, composition or brushwork.
The profile of Prina emerges at the intersection of this collective history and a body of work that remains little documented in the publicly accessible resources.
