Swiss painter and printmaker, born in 1955 in the Montreux area (Vaud).
Life
Born into a Swiss German family settled near Montreux, Christine Sefolosha drew from childhood, often at night during chronic bouts of insomnia. A horsewoman, she competed in shows and developed a deep affinity with animals; it was through horses that she met a veterinarian specialising in equine medicine.
In 1976, at twenty-one, she followed him to South Africa, his native country, and settled in Johannesburg. There she took up drawing and painting again and, by assisting her husband, learned the anatomy of the animals he treated. In 1982 she divorced and married the South African musician Patrick Sefolosha; faced with the apartheid laws forbidding relationships between Black and white people, the couple left the country for Switzerland, where two sons were born, among them the basketball player Thabo Sefolosha. After her parents’ death, settled in her childhood home, she began painting again from her memories of Africa. In 2000 she founded Quai 1-L’Atelier in the former waiting room of Montreux station.
The work
As much a printmaker as a painter, Christine Sefolosha often works on the floor, spreading dark pigments mixed with earth and tar by hand over large canvases or heavy papers. She also practises monotype, notably in the studio of the printer Raymond Meyer in Lutry. The totemic animal dominates her work.
“An atmosphere emerges from them that hovers between gentleness and terror, an atmosphere arising from the deep layers of a sensibility that stages visions of two opposing continents.” (Roger Cardinal)
Exhibitions and collections
- Les Yeux ouverts, Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris, 2007; Vaisseaux fantômes (2010-2011) and Waldszenen (2014), Galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris.
- Larguer les amarres, Château de Chillon, 29 August to 24 November 2019.
- L’Étoffe des rêves, Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris, until August 2026.
- Musée Jenisch and Nestlé Collection, Vevey; American Folk Art Museum, New York (Audrey B. Heckler collection).
- Publications: Timeless Wanderer (2015, preface by Roger Cardinal); The Hidden Art (SkiraRizzoli, texts by Colin Rhodes, Valérie Rousseau and Jane Kallir).