Leo Andenmatten
Born in 1922.
Died in 1979.
Self-taught, he moved to Lausanne in 1940, where he worked as a commercial clerk while continuing to pursue his painting.
His practice, centred on painting, developed chiefly in two iconographic registers—the landscape and the still life—and was accompanied by notable technical explorations: mosaic, stained glass, painting on glass, drawing, acrylic, oil and architectural decoration. Formally, his trajectory included a brief non-figurative period, followed by a search for balance in which the southern light he discovered during a stay in Spain in 1963 led him towards lighter tones and simplified compositions.
The award of a third Federal Art Scholarship in 1959 encouraged him to return to Valais and devote himself fully to painting. Institutionally, Andenmatten took part in local artistic life as a co-founder of the Valais section of the Société des Peintres, Sculpteurs et Architectes Suisses (SPSAS); he is recorded as having chaired the cantonal section in 1972.
In 1977, the Manoir de Martigny devoted a monograph and a retrospective to him. A critical retrospective was also dedicated to him at the Musée cantonal des beaux-arts in Sion in 1989.
