Les noces du lac et des nuages - Michelle Talandier

Published with the aid of the Commune of La Chaux and the Canton of Vaud.

Special edition, numbers 1 to 15, with an orignal aquatint from Pietro Sarto and limited edition cover.

With a reproduction of an aquatint from Pietro Sarto. "Les noces du lac et des nuages" is a long poem that follows "Un soleil en exil " (Editions La Chaloupe, 2008). The author evokes her wanderings in a foreign city, the huge arena that surrounds Lake Geneva where both the clouds and lake embrace each other in the truth of light. This drama of clouds and lake is dear to the painter Pietro Sarto.

Michelle Talandier passed a happy childhood on the coast. After 15 years in Paris, she came to settle on the shores of Lake Geneva. Writer, director and eclectic collections and finally a journalist, she now writes for pleasure and has published poetry, novels and tales.

Pietro Sarto was born in the Ticino region of Switzerland in 1930. His family moved to Neuchâtel and then Lausanne in 1945. He is a painter and engraver.

He began painting in 1946. From 1950 to 1959, he lived in Paris, where he learned his craft at l'Atelier de l'Ermitage with John Friedlaender (copper plate engraving) and Albert Flake (chisel). After returning to Switzerland he founded a intaglio workshop (1959) on behalf of the publisher Pierre Cailler, and in 1968, he created his own workshop in Villette with Luce Voruz (he moved to Saint-Prex in 1971).


Pietro Sarto has illustrated numerous books and has designed the sets several plays. At in 1977 he created the Fondation William Cuendet and his workshop at Saint-Prex. Pietro Sarto was appointed Federal Commissioner of Fine Arts in 1977. In 1986, the Gulbenkian Foundation held a retrospective (Lisbon), mandated by the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne. Among other distinctions, he received the Grand Prix of Foundation Vaudoise for his promotion and artistic creation (1989) and the Prize of the City of Lausanne (1994). A catalog raisonné of his works as an engraver and lithographer, was published in 1992.

Learn more about the artist...