Louis Soutter: Finger painting 1937-1942

June 27 - September 26, 2026

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with texts by Julie Borgeaud and Peter Sloterdijk.

Galerie Karsten Greve presents the exhibition Louis Soutter. Finger Painting 1937-1942 in St. Moritz. Thre presentation is devoted to the body of work now regarded as the culmination of his artistic career and as one of the most compelling and distinctive achievements in 20th-century art. Created during the final years of the artist's life, these works mark an extraordinary moment of artistic concentration and freedom.

Louis Soutter occupies a unique position within the art of his time. To this day, his work resists any clear classification. It engages with the achievements of modernism while also becoming an important source of inspiration for Jean Dubuffet and the emerge of Art Brut. Yet Soutter remains a singular figure - too independant to be fully subsumed under any art-historical category.

Louis Soutter was an exceptional creative personality - a musician, draughtsman and intellectual seeker. His work arose from a rare combination of cultural sophistication, spiritual inquiry and artistic independence: Religion, mythology, ritual and the fundamental questions of human existence permeate his oeuvre, as do experiences of solitude and vulnerability. It was precisely from this tension that Soutter developed a visual language of extraordinary intensity.

The works created between 1937 and 1942 appear as radical today as they did at the time of their creation. Executed directly on paper with his fingers, the figures increasingly detach themselves from descriptive representation. They appear as signs, shadows, dancers, saints or archaic beings, while simultaneously resisting any fixed interpretation. Their power lies not in narrative, but in an immediate presence that defies explanation.

An entire life is condensed within these works: the discipline of the musician, the sensitivity of the draughtsman and the curiosity of the seeker converge. Rhythm becomes form; movement becomes image. The figures seem to emerge from a deep memory while possessing a striking sense of immediacy. Archaic and modern, fragile and monumental at once, they open up a pictorial space in which personal experience encounters the universal human condition.

It is precisely this extraordinary freedom that accounts for the enduring relevance of Soutter's work. His images offer no answers; instead, they open up possibilities. They move between visibility and mystery, between inner experience and collective memory. Through their reduction, they unfold an astonishing emotional and intellectual power.

The exhibition invites visitors to redisover Louis Soutter as one of the most distinctive artistic personalities of the 20th-century, whose work has lost none of its enigmatic quality, intensity or human depth.

Louis Soutter was born in Morges, Switzerland, in 1871, and died in Ballaigues, Switzerland, in 1942.