EXHIBITION : « Gabriel Loppé, painter, climber and traveller »

DATES : 17th December 2022 – 14th January 2024
LOCATION : Fort Bard, vallée d’Aoste, Italy

An accomplished and accredited climber, and a painter of the high mountains, Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913) was also a photographer and traveller. He was both a climber and an artist who painted the Alpine peaks, the giant glaciers on the Mont Blanc massif and in the Bernese Oberland, capturing their dangerous seracs and gaping crevasses as well as the mountains’ smouldering sunsets. He was the first painter to plant an easel on the summit of Mont Blanc and record the spectacular panoramas, working from dawn to sunset. A bystander to the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, he also painted on his travels, criss-crossing Western Europe on the rapildy expanding steam train rail network.

Fort Bard is a cultural hub in the independent region of the Val d’Aosta and is devoting its exhibition entitled Gabriel Loppé, painter, climber and traveller to this key figure in the genre of mountain art as well as nineteenth century mountaineering.

This exhibition will reunite more than 90 paintings, drawings and photographs in the Fort Bard and will examine all facets of Gabriel Loppé as a painter, climber, photographer and inveterate traveller. To enhance this presentation a selection of his climbing equipment will go on display for the very first time.