Biography:

Youri Messen-Jaschin his installations, sculptures, oil paintings and tapestries.


Franz Meyer wrote that tapestries help to release the art of his separation and wandering and to surmount the crack among the creator and our time and the " means to see our life ". Every time has its style. Your search for the tapestry, is called: the movement of a tradition lost in the current language.

Native from the Baltic. Born in Arosa (Switzerland) in 1941, he becomes automatically Latvia nationality. During the invasion of the USSR, he lose the nationality, and come stateless from this date .

In Bern from 1970 to 1981, from 1982 till 1984 in Caracas and in Lausanne since 1984.

Youri Messen-Jaschin grew in Lausanne. The artistic studies bring hi to the National university of Fine art professor is Master Cami and at the Practical School of the High Studies of Sorbonne, section sciences and social (art history, Professor Francastel) in Paris. From 1962 till 1965 he visits the School of Arts in Lausanne. He works the carving with the painter Ernest Pizzotti. For the first time, he speaks about him in National Expo Switzerland in 1964 by his glass sculptures and in acrylic installation.

Youri Messen-Jaschin wants to form in several directions. So he works two years in the " Centre of the contemporary carving " in Geneva. Then, we meet him in Zurich, where he widens the pictorial perspectives at the painter Friederich Kuhn the experience of the circle in the face. From 1968 to 1970, he acts in the Högskolan för design and Konsthantwerk University of Gothenburg, where he realizes and work kinetic objects textiles. It is in 1967 that he meets during an exhibition Jesus Soto, Cruz-Diez and Le Park. By speaking with these artists, he confides fascinated by the optical art. He decides to dedicate quite the searches towards the kinetic art. In 1968 Youri receives the first prize for the contemporary Swiss graphic art. The same year, he is the beneficiary of a scholarship of the Swedish State and Volvo. In 1970, he realizes a Kinetic sculpture for the Gould corporation in Freiburg in Germany. It is a steel sculpture and a copper of three tons and a half.

In 1985, Youri receives the world first prize of the culture " world Premio della cultura " from Centro studie ricerche delle nazioni Calvatone Italy. He becomes also " Academician of Europe " of Centro Studi e Ricerche of Europa's Accademia in Italy. Youri Messen-Jaschin is also in the "Who's Who", " Quid " and in the dictionary of the Swiss artists.

The sculptures are enriched by the movement, placed in the environment (the movement of space), and completed by music electronic sounds (movement activates, sounds). Its first searches with sounds and movement date the end of the 60s. Already in the 70s, Youri integrates into his optical art the neon, which he continues even to use today in his sculptures and installation, his tapestries and the paintings.

The powerful surfaces with the monumental bound in the insertion of the third dimension mark Youri's works.


He also had the privilege to sell the unique tapestry realized in the style of the Pop art " More Light ". This work was thought when he stayed in New York and when he met there the artists of the Pop Art. He was an enthusiast of the use of the color in this style of art. Migros Bund in Zurich was interested in this work. This tapestry was realized in the 70s in its Zollikofen's studio. In a striking way, in the creation " More Light ", the light bulb appears in the Pop art as a subversive force which escapes from myths and from emblems of the world of the consumption. This tapestry is today in Migros Vaud's Switzerland private collection.

Last year, he participates in numerous international exhibitions and he received prices for the searches in the optical art, among others in Italy. He had the privilege to see the work chosen in international competitions in Canada, in the United States and in Italy. He is already invited with this paintings to European exhibition.

This work, exposed all over the world in numerous individual or collective exhibition's, is at the moment spread between private collections and national and international museums. Youri Messen-Jaschin is without context an eminent representative of the European culture.

René Neuenschwander art critic Bern Switzerland