Francois DE RIBAUPIERRE ✿

François de Ribaupierre (1886-1981) was a Swiss painter, sculptor and glassmaker, born in Clarens, Switzerland. François de Ribaupierre attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts (1902-1905), then the Royal Academy of Monaco (1905-1906).

He spends a winter in Paris before a long stay in Florence (1907), where he is enrolled in the International Academy. The Renaissance, German Romanticism, Symbolism, the Impressionists, the Italian Primitives, Hodler, marked him deeply. His first compositional projects were born in 1906.

Since 1912 François de Ribaupierre has lived in Crêt de Béranges, above La Tour-de-Peilz, where he created, in the 1920s, an artistic community, a sort of meeting point through plastic expression in all its forms (ceramic , weaving, Dalcroze-style gymnastics, etc.). The painter chooses Forclaz (Val d'Hérens) as his place of secondary residence (1936), due to his old attachment to Valais (landscapes).

François de Ribaupierre paints an exterior (wall decoration) for a private house in Clarens (10s). During the First World War he met his master, Ernest Biéler, with whom he collaborated to execute the frescoes of the Jenisch Museum in Vevey, then those of the Hôtel de Ville in Le Locle (1922).

Out of friendship and respect for Biéler, François de Ribaupierre dedicated the year 1955 to saving Guillaume Tell's frescoes from the Montbenon chapel. He decorated several churches with frescoes, including the chapel of Haudères and the temple of Clarens.

François de Ribaupierre made numerous stained glass windows for churches in Valais and Vaud (in Vevey, Pully, Clarens, Nyon, etc.); he collaborated with Louis Rivier for the stained glass windows of the north transept of the cathedral of Lausanne in 1933. François de Ribaupierre experimented with various sculpture techniques (plaster and bronze) and designed some posters.

François de Ribaupierre exhibits regularly in the canton of Vaud, notably at the Arlaud Museum and the Jenisch Museum in Vevey. The latter dedicated a retrospective to him in 1956.