Marguerite Burnat-Provins
Marguerite Burnat-Provins was born in Arras, the oldest child of a cultured middle class family. Her father supported her career as an artist, and she moved to Paris for her academic studies. There she met the Swiss architect Adolphe Burnat, whom she married. The couple moved to Vevey where they lived at 20 Rue d’Italie near the Grand Hôtel du Lac. There she developed a friendship with the painter Ernest Biéler, and encouraged by him, she began spending time in Savièse, in the Valais to paint and write. Her work in this period was influenced both by the currents of symbolism and the artists of Saviese, which at the time was a center for artists and writers. In Saviese she met and fell in love with the Swiss engineer Paul de Kalbermatten. Her love for him inspired a book of 100 poems called Livre pour toi. The passion frankly depicted in the book and the affair itself caused a scandal in Switzerland. Following Marguerite’s divorce from Burnat, the couple married and after travels through the Middle East and Africa eventually settled in Grasse in France. The outbreak of WWI was an enormous shock to the artist, and had a profound impact on Burnat-Provins work. She began the series entitled “Ma Ville” depicting hallucinogenic visions of people, fantomes and fantastic beasts. The series obsessed her for the rest of her life, its unique and visionary qualities put her in the category of outsider or art brut artists. Her work can be found in the Collection de L’Art Brut in Lausanne.
