There is a new reason to make the trip across to Rossinière this summer. Galerie MaisonBis has opened in the centre of the village, and for its first exhibition it has chosen a painter whose work is anything but shy.

A colourful beginning for Rossinière’s new gallery
Émile-Pierre “Milous” Bonny (1913–1974) was a Lausanne artist, prolific painter, gallery owner and well-known bon vivant. He studied with Violette Diserens and later in Paris, where he encountered André Derain and Moïse Kisling. His own painting remained resolutely figurative, even as abstraction was taking hold around him.

Bonny painted with strong colours and considerable energy, with echoes of Fauvism running through his work. Portraits, nature and imagined landscapes recur, as does the sun, which became his personal emblem. There seems to have been little separation between the man and the work: accounts of his ebullient personality and appetite for life sit rather comfortably alongside the exuberance of his canvases.

The exhibition, Milous Bonny: une vie en couleurs, is unusual for another reason. The paintings have been loaned from the substantial collection belonging to Bonny’s descendants, held in Echandens near his former home and studio at La Châtelaine. This is the first time since his death in 1974 that works from the collection have been exhibited outside Echandens.

The timing coincides with the publication of Marie Bagi’s book of the same name, largely based on works from the family collection. Together, the exhibition and catalogue offer an opportunity to look again at a Vaud artist who followed his own course rather than the prevailing artistic fashion.

And then there is the gallery itself.

Galerie MaisonBis occupies part of a 19th-century stone-and-wood house in the centre of Rossinière. Built after the devastating village fire of 1855, it served as a bakery and general store until 1965 and is still remembered locally as Maison Bistoni, after its last baker, Arthur Bistoni. One of the gallery’s owners previously worked as a curator at the British Museum, an experience that has helped shape the new exhibition space.

Opening a gallery in Rossinière inevitably comes with a rather formidable artistic neighbour. Balthus lived and worked at the Grand Chalet from 1976 until his death in 2001, and his presence remains closely tied to the village. Yet MaisonBis is taking a direction of its own. Its focus will be on figurative and representational art, offering something quite different from the predominantly contemporary gallery scene in Gstaad.

For a new gallery, Milous Bonny seems an appropriate place to start: local enough to belong here, unconventional enough to be worth discovering – and absent from exhibition walls outside Echandens for more than half a century.

When: Until 12 September 2026 | Fridays–Sundays, 2–5.30pm | Where: Galerie MaisonBis, Rue de la Placette 14, Rossinière