Laure Pigeon : Infiniment Bleu, Infinite Blue

Discover an example of striking and spiritual graphic art that takes its cue from messages from the hereafter to produce unique creations. Text in English and French.

Laure Pigeon (1882-1965) is one of the leading figures in Art Brut (Outsider Art), along with Aloïse Corbaz and Adolf Wölfli. The Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne probably possesses her entire oeuvre, amounting to over 400 works, including writings, notebooks, small-scale drawings and an extensive series of large compositions in blue ink. These are all part of the corpus of works acquired by Jean Dubuffet, the historic collection around which the museum was founded.

In 1978, the Collection de l’Art Brut held the first and only monographic exhibition dedicated to this artist. A new exhibition in 2025 has now been devoted to her exclusively. It offers a representative selection of her striking graphic work, spanning a period of 30 years.

Like Madge Gill, Jeanne Tripier, Augustin Lesage and Raphaël Lonné, Laure Pigeon too was a member of the spiritualist fraternity – men and women who feel “selected” to receive messages from the hereafter and claim the deceased are responsible for their creations. The spiritualist’s hand is therefore guided and merely executes what the spirits dictate.

The catalog, in French and English, includes essays by several authors and a large number of color illustrations.

Anic Zanzi has been a curator at the Collection de l’Art Brut since 2003. An art historian with a degree in Public Relations, she is in charge of editing the various works published by the institution and organizes exhibitions, such as People (2016), Henriette Zéphir (2017), Ernst Kolb (2018), Carlo Zinelli, recto verso (2019) and Michel Nedjar (2023), as well as two Art Brut biennials, Véhicules (2013) and Croyances (2022). Flavie Beuvin is a visual artist with a degree in Art and Aesthetics. Her art and theoretical work focus on the echoes between the creating body and the body of the work. The concept of “vegetality”, which she developed as part of her academic research and published by Presses Universitaires du Septentrion as Végétalité, Art Brut et féminins, lies at the heart of her aesthetics. She is also extremely keen on drawing, combining it with various other media, such as embroidery and collage. Vânia Freitas holds a BA in Conservation-Restoration from the Haute École Arc in Neuchâtel. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Museum Studies at the University of Neuchâtel. She has gained experience in preventive conservation through periods spent in various other institutions, notably the Cinémathèque suisse research center and Maison d’Ailleurs. Vânia also spent time at the Collection de l’Art Brut from 2023 to 2024, working mainly on Laure Pigeon’s oeuvre.