About Walter Mafli

Walter Mafli was born on May 10, 1915 in Rebstein in the canton of St. Gallen. Very early, he was placed in an orphanage and would spend his childhood and adolescence there. A drawing teacher noticed his talent and made him aware of it. As an orphan, however, Walter Mafli did not have the opportunity to continue his studies. Forced to earn his living as soon as possible, he undertook an apprenticeship as a stove fitter then as a tiler. In 1934, he settled in Neuchâtel where he frequented the painters Edouard Galli, Max Theynet, the Barraud brothers, Octave Matthey and L'Eplattenier. He benefited from their teaching by accompanying them to paint in nature. He participated in a first group exhibition in 1943 at the Casino d'Yverdon. In 1944, he followed courses at the Cantonal School of Drawing in Lausanne, then made long stays in Paris, where he discovered post-war abstract art. From then on, individual exhibitions in various galleries in French-speaking Switzerland followed one after another and in 1958, he received the first Prize for Abstract Painting awarded by Galerie Kasper, then located in Lausanne. In 1959, the same gallery awarded him the Swiss Prize for Abstract Painting. Despite this recognition, it was not until around 1980 that Walter Mafli would obtain the consecration of a wider public. We can then speak of a true "success story". His canvases continued to attract buyers, then measuring the value of his standing. He entered very large private and public collections.

In 2002, he created the "Les Enfants de Mafli" Foundation whose objective is to help motivated but impoverished adolescents to successfully complete studies or a professional project.

The singularity of Walter Mafli's career is having long conducted in parallel a career as a tiler craftsman and his artistic activity. Far from fashions, he tried all styles, from abstract to figurative. Nature remains his main source of inspiration, his favorite themes, the lake, the vineyard and the countryside, which he transposes onto canvas with colors deposited most often with spatula and knife in successive layers, thus catching the light and giving depth and relief to the subject. The "Mafli touch" is thus easily recognizable. Cracked painting evoking plastering and recalling the former worker he was. One still feels the evocation of his tiler work in his abstract compositions made of juxtaposition of the same motif, constructed graphic aestheticism, playing with forms and composition of the subject to tend toward purity until becoming only monochrome surfaces emptied of any accident, any formal trace. Walter Mafli affirms it: the choice of abstraction is an affirmation against everything that hinders freedom. And freedom, Walter Mafli cruelly lacked in his childhood. So he made up for it. And at 94 years old, despite the scratches, it is his humor, his kindness, his generosity, his energy and his vitality that make him an eternally young man passionate about painting and all its styles.