Pierre-Alexandre Junod
Born in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland) in 1909.
Died in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) in 2001.
Swiss · Twentieth-century Swiss painting · poster art · printed graphic design · geometric and colour-based abstraction.
Pierre-Alexandre Junod developed a practice encompassing painting, drawing and poster art, deeply rooted in the Neuchâtel milieu. His training first took him to the art school in Zurich, then to Geneva, before he returned to Neuchâtel with a teaching certificate in drawing.
Poster art occupies an essential place in his career. His compositions intended for tourism, cultural or commercial communication testify to a synthetic conception of the printed image, founded on the legibility of the motif and the effectiveness of colour. The colour lithograph designed in 1958 for Leukerbad–Loèche-les-Bains particularly documents this aspect of his activity.
At the same time, Junod continued to develop his painted oeuvre. An abstract composition from 1967 and the large square-format works brought together for his 1999 retrospective attest to a visual language constructed through vivid contrasts of white, black and colour. His attachment to the mountains also found lasting expression in his landscapes and in the contributions he made to the Neuchâtel section of the Swiss Alpine Club.
His work was shown notably at Galerie Jonas in Cortaillod in 1986, and then at Galerie Belimage in Valangin in 2012. Two paintings on hardboard that entered the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel confirm the artist’s presence in the public collections of his region. The poster Loterie Suisse Romande – Tirage du 11 juin 1978 forms part of this corpus.
The works by Pierre-Alexandre Junod presented by Swiss Art Gallery extend this artistic journey and take their place naturally within this corpus.
