Adrien Holy

Ticino Houses Oil Painting on Canvas, Framed, 1960s, Landscape Art

1963

Adrien Saint (January 30, 1898 in Saint-Imier - December 29, 1978 in Geneva) was a Swiss painter, graphic designer, set designer and art teacher. His work includes landscapes, figures and murals as well as advertising graphics and scenography. Adrien Holy was the son of medalist Jules Holy and Sophie Louise Nicolet, née Félix. After studying at the art schools of Geneva and La Chaux-de-Fonds, he moved to Paris in 1920, where he worked as a painter, factory worker, commercial artist, textile designer and set designer until 1939. His works were exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants and at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris in the 1930s. “Characteristics of his paintings are figurative scenes, portraits, interiors and vividly colored landscapes. The quays and rooftops of Geneva or Paris, the quiet street scenes of Ticino or Venice as well as the harbor and beach scenes of Spain, southern France and Norway reveal the wandering traveler, portraits the seismographs of emotional states, still lifes his sense of mood. Unlike the brightly colored fireworks of his earlier works, the artist's later works are characterized by more subdued tones." Holy is one of the Romand representatives of figurative painting. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he moved to Geneva and produced murals there as well as at Grandfontaine. From 1961 to 1966, Holy taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. From 1961 to 1968, he was president of the Federal Commission of the Arts and vice-president of the Federal Commission of Applied Arts. From 1962 to 1968 he was a member of the commission of the Gottfried Keller Foundation. In these functions, he played a key role in shaping the promotion of art in his region and throughout Switzerland. In 1971, he received the Art Prize of the City of Geneva. Adrien Holy participated in the first Tokyo International Art Exhibition in 1953. He also exhibited his works at the Kunsthaus Zürich, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Glarus and Aargauer Kunsthaus. Holy had been married since 1928 to the painter Ellisif, born Bentzen Bjørset (December 3, 1903 - February 15, 1988 in Geneva) from Drammen (Norway). Both are buried with their son Jean-Claude (1932–2007), a mathematician, in the Cimetière des Rois, considered the Geneva pantheon.