The Club for the Friends of Painting

The «Club for the Friends of Painting» was founded in 1959 at the instigation of Mr. Pierre Beck, who had devoted himself to water-colours for some time. With the backing of two painter friends, he put an ad in the newspaper and found 24 members.
In 1969, the Club had about forty members and moved into 9 rue du Seyon in refurbished premises where it is still to be found today.
From 1959 to 1989, the Club organized its annual exhibitions on the ship Ville de Neuchâtel, transformed for the occasion into «A Floating Art Gallery for the Friends of Painting». Since 1989, for reasons of comfort, the annual exhibitions take place in the Peristyle of the Town Hall.
The Club offers those who are interested the chance to attend an evening class every Friday for two months for the sum of CHF 30.–. If the course and the environment are to the student’s liking, he or she may apply for membership.
Every year, thirty-five evening courses are taught by a teacher following a pre-set programme. Other courses may be set up on Wednesday evenings, for sculpture for example, depending on the demands of the members and the availability of teachers. Fun is not forgotten and some evenings of entertainment are organised inside the premises in Winter and outside during the Summer.

Rosemarie Di Giusto-Schumacher, President.

Artistes ayant exposé dans le cadre du Club: Diana Barina, Mario Bourquin, Michel Brügger, Jacques Brouck, Danielle Chasles, Armand Clerc, Ruth De Metsenaere, Rosemarie Di Giusto-Schumacher, Gérard Donzé, Marlène Gilliand, Berti Greter, Elisabeth Grisel, Jean-Claude Jaberg, Béatrice Lecomte, Rose Mellana, Irène Otter, Marie-Josée Paratte, Evelyne Ramseyer, Erica Rosset, Maria Rousseau, Marianne Schneeberger, Micheline Sidler, Jacques Tissot, Ruth Vouillamoz.

The Peristyle of the Town Hall

«This extra-fine water-colour [Talens] is used by professional artists all over the world because its colours remain vivid for centuries». The paint-shops provide a great deal of information about the way in which amateur painters, who represent their main clientele, conceive art: their activity apparently requires extremely high standards when it comes to choice and the quality of the products used: finesse, brilliance, intensity, luminosity, viscosity, miscibility, covering power, transparency, high hold and purity of the pigments, uniformity of the drying, and even their unchangeable character and resistance to light. Whether it involves oil colours, acrylics, water-colours, tempera colours or pastels, pencils or chalks, the colours seem to spread out to infinity, with extremely large choice of shades. The trade-marks bear prestigious names, referring to famous painters such as Van Gogh or Rembrandt, or to strongly symbolic places such as Lascaux and the Louvre («By working with Louvre you’ll finish up in the museum»). They put the emphasis on new technologies, try to integrate these into the history of painting and promise immortality for the material and the work.

Je n’ai pas connaissance d’une histoire de l’art qui aille jusqu’à prendre en compte les œuvres des peintres du dimanche. Toutefois, les historiens ont travaillé, ces derniers temps, à mettre au jour, ou à réévaluer, des œuvres jusqu’alors négligées. Sur l’écran de l’éclectisme postmoderne, des recherches singulières ou inclassables, des styles archaïsants ou académiques, etc., affleurent et trouvent une résonance en regard de la variété des œuvres contemporaines.

Catherine Millet. 1997. L’art contemporain. Paris: Flammarion, p. 75.

> Matériel de peinture.
Couleurs Fillistorf. 15, rue de l’Ecluse, 2004 Neuchâtel.