Louis Deltour

Louis Deltour is an assistant in art history at the University of Geneva. His publications focus on the first half of the 20th century, its artistic institutions, non-modernist painting, wall decoration and their ideological dimension. He has notably contributed to Une tradition révolutionnaire. Les arts figuratifs de Rome à Paris 1905-1940 published by Villa Medici (2020).

His doctoral research is entitled: Les peintres du “groupe de Rome” : enjeux culturels, esthétiques et politiques dans l’Europe de l’entre-deux-guerres. It is directed by Dario Gamboni and Giovanna Zapperi (University of Geneva). He is interested in a group of artists who stayed at the French Academy in Rome in the 1910s and 1920s as laureates of the Prix de Rome and who worked together upon their return to France in the 1920s and 1930s.

At Villa Medici, he will study the genesis of the common style of these artists, who multiply references to the landscapes of Italy or to works preserved in Rome, and will seek to clarify their aesthetic and ideological positions.

Jean Dupas, Architectures métaphysiques, oil on isorel panel, 39 x 58.5 cm, monogrammed and dated 1945, lower right, Paris, Galerie Didier Aaron.

© Portrait: Louis Deltour