Maxim or colouring

Exhibition: 26 September 2013 to 8 March 2014

Some people have might retain a childhood memory of a photographer colouring his prints with the aid of paintbrushes and an air brush, set up in front of his retouching desk in his studio window in the Saint-François passageway in Lausanne…

Many people from Lausanne went to the studio of Max Bressler, known as Maxim, to immortalize their family, and sometimes their pet animal! Maxim also produced the portraits of various personalities and actors of the cinema and theatre; he also worked regularly for the Municipal Theatre of Lausanne.

Max Bressler, alias Maxim, was a talented portrait artist, who continued the practice of colouring photographs long after colour photography became generally available.

Born in 1894, he did his training in Geneva with S. Bastid, as well as attending the College of Fine Arts. He established himself in Lausanne in 1927, where he worked until the 1970s.

For over twenty years, the Museum has had in its collections a wonderful selection of Max Bressler’s photographs certainly provided by his family. Over recent years, we have been regularly able to acquire new photographs by this photographer with the intention of one day exhibiting the fruits of his surprising work and of evoking the colouring technique that he practised over so many years….. far from the saturated renderings of the industrial processes of the 60s, which today are becoming more watered down, his pictures are totally incomparable.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, with the support of the Sandoz Family Office.