Jean Roll
Born in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1921.
Died in Mies (Switzerland) on 6 June 2015.
Swiss · Swiss figurative painting associated with the Geneva school · geometrically structured, poetic-realist still life or “silent nature,” shaped by transparency and restrained light.
A Swiss figurative painter associated with the Geneva school, Jean Roll developed an art grounded in precise drawing, balanced forms and deliberately restrained light. While remaining committed to representation, he gave his compositions a distinctive modern clarity through geometric structure, carefully measured depth and subtle effects of transparency.
In 1943 he worked in Valais with Paul Monnier, who welcomed him into his studio and introduced him to the practice of religious and decorative art. This experience informed an unusually broad range of activity: alongside easel painting, Roll created stage designs, mosaics, frescoes and tapestries and devised works for architectural settings. Documented commissions include his cartoons for the side altars of the Church of Christ the King in Petit-Lancy, the rose window of Sainte-Thérèse Church and the stained-glass Vierge à l’Enfant for the Sainte-Bernadette Chapel in Laconnex.
From 1952 he taught for more than three decades at Geneva’s School of Fine and Decorative Arts. This sustained pedagogical work accompanied a regular exhibition career and lasting involvement in the region’s artistic networks. In 1973 he spent a year at the Swiss Institute in Rome, extending a career already shaped by numerous presentations throughout Switzerland.
He participated in the 1951 Swiss Art Exhibition in Bern and exhibited in Schaffhausen in 1960 with the eight Geneva artists of the Groupe des Corps-Saints. He was subsequently shown at the Musée Rath in Groupe 68 and Artistes de Genève, 1980 : la peinture, and in 1983 took part in L’Objet événement artistique at the Halles de l’Île. Retrospectives held in Champéry and Clarens-Montreux in 2017 later offered a broader view of his long artistic development.
The most characteristic aspect of Roll’s painting lies in his still lifes, which he preferred to call “silent natures.” Eggs, glass spheres, feathers, shells, books, vessels, metronomes and obelisks occupy spare interiors conceived as small theatres of immobility. Their almost tactile precision never excludes mystery: through reflections, contrasts and empty intervals, Roll turns the everyday presence of objects into a meditation on time and silence. The oils Nature morte, Le Jour de Gloire, Ainsi font-ils and Le Mariage Secret extend this pictorial world within this corpus.
