Aloïse. Sketchbook facsimile, Paris, abcd & ITE Finland, 2003.
Born in Lausanne in 1886, Aloïse Corbaz began to draw in the 1920s. Until her death on April 5th, 1964, she would have produced thousands of drawings, with chalk or colour pencil, which she sometimes diluted with her own saliva, in order to create glazes with saturated colours. To achieve the dazzling white colour she added toothpaste. At other times she integrated collage in her compositions. She drew on both sides of large white sheets but she preferred the already used wrapping paper, which she sewed together with cotton thread. The dimensions of her drawings range from postcard format to big rolls, some of which reach fourteen meters. Aloïse has also created about thirty sketchbooks, according to Jacqueline Porret-Forel, Aloïse’ general practicioner and friend during the former’s stay at the psychiatric hospital of La Rosière in Gimel-sur-Morges. This sketchbook of thirty-eight pages was created around 1941. Among Aloïse’ works these notebooks, a sort of pictorial diaries, are the most moving and aesthetically the most accomplished.
38 pages
Price: 25 €