The retrospective dedicated to the Neuchâtel artist, Jeanne-Odette, traces her creative career over 60 years. This same period also saw fertile dialogue between textile art and contemporary art.
In 1953, Jeanne Odette’s aesthetic interest in tapestry took shape while working with Elsi Giauque, a pioneer of the Textile Arts in Switzerland, and a pupil of Sophie Tauber-Arp. A room in the museum offers a glimpse into the work of Elsi Giauque.
Jeanne-Odette was fascinated by the metamorphosis of matter. She started to experiment in different techniques of weaving, eventually developing her own method, in 1976, which she called “interference”. The warp threads, which form the matrix of the tapestry, are pulled across various levels, in between which the weft threads interfere. This gives her tapestries a new kind of depth and lightness. In resonance with her textile creations, the exhibition presents a collection of models. These represent an important stage in the process of making the gigantic tapestries with which Jeanne-Odette and her husband Claudévard have adorned many buildings. At the end of the 1980s, she started varying her materials, by incorporating leftover elements or industrial fabric which she then put to a different use. In contrast to this plastic research, she created a series of drawings and gouaches, assembling textiles and paper which show the graphic approach of the artist as developed in the second half of her career.

Jeanne-Odette was born in Bienne, in 1930. She is currently living in le Cerneux-Péquignot, in the Canton of Neuchâtel.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Fondation culturelle BCN (for the production of the movie “Jeanne-Odette de fil en aiguille”, by Dominique Othenin-Girard) and the Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art.